International Law

Old secrets week

Posted on July 07, 2008
Revelations bout the 60s, followed by another about the 50s. If as now revealed, the US Government at high levels knew,there is an interesting issue about what if anything Australian records contain about incidents now coming to light in Korea and the US about the early days of the Korean War...

Transparency central to lifting trust in government

Posted on July 07, 2008
Here is an extract from the introduction to The Pew Center Report on the Government Performance Project - how well state governments in the US manage information, infrastructure, money, and people, released earlier this year:"Just a few years ago, states would boast about their latest, cutting-edge piece oftechnology...

Still in the dark on hospital and doctor performance

Posted on July 06, 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that NSW Department of Health continues to hold the line against publication of information about the professional performance of hospitals and doctors, but the Feds are showing no sign of backing off their insistence that more transparency has to be part of the away forward on reform of the health system...

Chicken little sighted in Canberra

Posted on July 06, 2008
Dennis Atkins in the Courier Mail says Federal Cabinet will today consider Minister Faulkner's submission on Freedom of Information reform, with strong public service advice that removing "ministerial discretion to block the release of documents, ....

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Anonymity not warranted for significant agency mistakes

Posted on July 03, 2008
An unnamed local council in Victoria released 223 pages of documents to a Freedom of Information applicant who was involved in a protracted dispute with a neighbour, including 185 pages of information provided largely in confidence by the neighbour about their side of the story, and without any consultation...

FOI grounded as parliamentarians take flight

Posted on July 03, 2008
Midwinter, and many MPs take flight for foreign climes, hopefully to broaden their horizons(or not as the case may be). Junket or no, as this editorial in the Herald Sun points out, there is a lack of accountability as a result of the fact that parliament(in all jurisdictions,not just Victoria) is not an agency for the purposes of freedom of information legislation...

Some advances on the transparency front

Posted on July 02, 2008
Credit where due to the Federal Government and Special Minister of State Faulkner for these initiatives for improved transparency, even though the first two still fall short of a robust disclosure regime:Publication of information on the web about aggregate cost of travel by office-holders On line publication of the Register of Lobbyists New guidelines on use of public money for government advertising include the requirement for publication on the web of Auditor General's assessment of compliance...

FOI: cost and delay a continuing problem

Posted on July 01, 2008
Stories of cost and delay are commonplace in Freedom of Information experience, but here is Tim Lester of Nine television network on the story so far of an attempt to access two reports on the preparedness of hospitals to cope with a national emergency ($ 3650 to make a decision says the Federal Department of Health); and The Age on a bill for almost $2000, and no "public interest " reduction to get to first base, with an application for documents from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet concerning "rendition", the US practice of forced transfer of terrorism-related prisoners between countries...

FOI decisions around the country in June

Posted on June 30, 2008
The most important recent Freedom of Information decision (at least in NSW) was the NSW Court of Appeal ruling that the Administrative Decisions Tribunal had no power to examine issues associated with the adequacy of an agency search for documents - see my post and this commentary by Matthew Moore in the Sydney Morning Herald...

Thanks to the Democrats for trying

Posted on June 26, 2008
A salute to the Democrats as they leave the Senate for the last time, for their close interest in transparency and accountability issues, particularly Andrew Murray whose efforts included two Freedom of Information reform bills that never made it, and Natasha Stott Despoja for her advocacy of improvements in privacy laws, one of which would have made our political parties subject to the law, all to no avail...

Members interest declarations not easy to find

Posted on June 26, 2008
wajuzi.com A post here in March commented on the requirement for members of parliament to lodge a declaration of interests, and the wonderfully anachronistic practice in this day and age, of only making the register available for public inspection in Parliament House in Canberra during business hours...

Members interests bared and await inspection-in Canberra

Posted on June 26, 2008
Pure coincidence, after the post here yesterday, that new registers of interests of members of the House of Representatives and Senate, and details of the cost of travel for members and former members were tabled on the last day of sittings in Canberra as Parliament rose for a two month break...

12 year old cabinet documents still make a front page story

Posted on June 25, 2008
The front page article by Linton Besser in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald "The $1b toll bribe that bought Labor votes" may have caused the reader to gag on the cornflakes when reading details from cabinet documents dated 1996 released under the Freedom of Information Act...

Ombudsman urges FOI action not just at Immigration

Posted on June 25, 2008
The Commonwealth Ombudsman's report on delay by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) in dealing with requests under the Freedom of Information Act draws attention to the fact that prompt access by an individual to personal information held by a government agency is critical for many applicants affected by government decisions, and that DIAC, faced continually with a large number of applications(last year almost 15000), failed at senior management level to recognise and act on systemic problems in the way it made information available generally, and in processing applications...

Big welcome and congratulations to OpenAustralia.org

Posted on June 25, 2008
A big bouquet to Matthew Landauer, Katherine Szuminska, Bruno Mattarollo, Matthew Panetta and Wade Millican for the launch last week of OpenAustralia.org and free and easily searchable Federal Hansard (the parliamentary record for readers from afar). Its based on the work of mysociety in the UK and their TheyWorkForYou website...

FOI processing-12 years outmatched by 30

Posted on June 24, 2008
The Independent Audit into the State of Free Speech in Australia, conducted last year on behalf of the coalition of media organisations, Australia's Right to Know, included a lot of stories about excessive delay in dealing with freedom of information applications...

A glimmer of light on political donations-at least for NSW local council candidates

Posted on June 24, 2008
Much needed reforms to Federal election laws, particularly in relation to political donations, have been sidelined for a year, according to Special Minister of State John Faulkner, as a result of the Opposition using its numbers in the Senate to refer the bill to a committee with a very generous report deadline...

Queensland's OneSchool in the spotlight

Posted on June 24, 2008
The story in the Courier Mail doesn't quite match the headline "Backflip over OneSchool online student database"- one school principal cold on some aspects does not a backflip make- but there are signs of concern and some rumblings of discontent in Queensland about the inclusion of photographs and other details, and the privacy implications associated with the collection,use and disclosure of this type of information, once the project received wide publicity

NSW Court of Appeal rules no go for Tribunal on adequacy of search for documents

Posted on June 23, 2008
In a decision that appears to further complicate things for those who seek to contest an agency determination under the NSW Freedom of Information Act, the NSW Court of Appeal has unanimously ruled that the Administrative Decisions Tribunal has no jurisdiction to examine issues concerning the adequacy of an agency's search to locate documents containing information of the kind requested...

University student teacher evaluations should be publicly available

Posted on June 22, 2008
Professor Ross Guest of Griffith University in The Australian Higher Education supplement last week said we would greatly benefit if we all knew what university students thought about the teaching skills of their teachers, and contrasts our general culture of secrecy with the US where the law requires state funded universities to make such information publicly available:"Imagine a university world where students knew who were the better teachers and they could vote with their dollars...

Queensland culture change in the frame

Posted on June 22, 2008
The Queensland Premier keeps saying it, so its worth keeping it in the frame:".. in another thinly veiled swipe at Beattie government secrecy, Ms Bligh vows to lead a "new wave of Freedom of Information reform". "Not just a reform of the law, but change in the culture ...

Anyone interested in budget transparency?

Posted on June 19, 2008
Its tough going if you are looking for acknowledgment of improved transparency in some areas of government activity. Take the Federal Budget for example. Minister for Finance and Deregulation Lindsay Tanner, in an address to a CEDA conference two weeks ago, said that the improvements in the quality of information provided in this year's budget papers had received little media attention, and proceeded to spell out a raft of reforms in "many ways directed at making it easier to identify government waste and excess...

Solomon and related developments

Posted on June 18, 2008
Dr Paul Williams in the Courier Mail urged the Queensland Government to act on the recommendations.Keryn McKinnon in the West Australian can't detect any sign of interest from the Premier there in broad ranging reform of the kind advocated by David Solomon...

Approved council minutes still subject to FOI amendment

Posted on June 18, 2008
This NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal decision resolved a Freedom of Information review application of a refusal to amend a report to a local council meeting by ordering the council to make two of five requested amendments and upheld the council decision on the other three...

Red letter day in September

Posted on June 18, 2008
From today's Australian:"PM speaks up: Kevin Rudd is to give the keynote address at the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association conference in September. He is expected to talk about freedom of information and the importance of environmental management by the newspaper industry...

White House admin support just like the cooks and cleaners

Posted on June 16, 2008
With discussion here (in some circles) about extending freedom of information legislation to organisations not now covered, and general thinking that the US provides a model for those arguing for improvement in our access to government information laws, a court decision that the White House Office of Administration is not an agency for the purposes of the US Act comes as a surprise...

What does the public service have in common with a ute on a country road?

Posted on June 15, 2008
Allan Gyngell Executive Director of the foreign policy think tank, the Lowy Institute, has spent his career in and around government in Australia, including a stint as adviser to former Prime Minister Paul Keating. He heaped praise on the professionalism and quality of the Australian Public Service in delivering a paper recently on Think Tanks and Foreign Policy but also had this to say about another attribute of the service:"However, it is also small, highly collegial, prone to unnecessary secrecy and, if left to its own devices, as opaque as the windscreen of a Ute on a dusty road in February...

Solomon Freedom of Information proposals in the news.

Posted on June 15, 2008
John Hartigan Chief Executive and Chairman of News Limited:"Freedom of Information ball is in the Premier's court"( Courier Mail) warmly welcomed the report:".. it is a historic document that could put Queenslanders at the vanguard of a new form of open government unlike anything else in the country...

More needed than just an information commissioner

Posted on June 15, 2008
UK Information Commissioner Richard ThomasWith the Federal Government committed to establishing (sometime) an information commissioner to provide leadership and to deal with freedom of information complaints, and Queensland considering an enhanced role for its commissioner in accordance with recommendations of the Solomon Report, this article in The Independent is a reminder from the UK that the work of the lead agency responsible for encouraging openness in government is never done...

Reasonable steps in searching for documents

Posted on June 15, 2008
This recent decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal provides a good statement of the law concerning the requirement in the Federal Freedom of Information Act to undertake a search for documents relevant to an application and what to be considered if they cannot be located...

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