International Law

Complexity in the move to simplicitly

Posted on June 12, 2008
One of many positive recommendations in the Solomon report is that in Queensland most Freedom of Information exemptions be replaced by a single exemption where disclosure would on balance "be contrary to the public interest." If this is acted upon, it would not represent a first in Australian access to government information law...

MPs travel in the dark

Posted on June 12, 2008
In a recent post about the opaque setting in which members of parliament use public money, I said that at least we had regular reporting on Federal MPs travel.Yet Kim Wheatley in The Advertiser reports that in identifying almost 40 overseas trips by soon to retire senator, Grant Chapman, including a "lap of honour" this year, with "complete records difficult to obtain, parliamentary insiders believe there are likely to be more...

Solomon sets FOI reform hares running

Posted on June 11, 2008
Further reporting, comment and opinion on the Solomon report today. All positive, with a consistent theme that proposed reforms should be emulated nationally.The Courier Mail finds the Premier's positive response heartening, but regrets that confidentiality will be assured for some ministerial briefing documents...

Queensland FOI review report published

Posted on June 10, 2008
The Solomon Review of the Queensland Freedom of Information Act has issued its final report today-it runs to well over 400 pages. From a quick look at the summary there are plenty of recommendations for culture change, pro-active disclosure and simplification of exemptions...

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Much to like in Queensland review report

Posted on June 10, 2008
The Solomon Review is impressive and comprehensive, and contains important new ideas about how to deliver on the objective that underpins all our freedom of information acts- extending as far as possible the rights of the public to access government information...

Canberra should find new Queensland thinking of interest

Posted on June 10, 2008
This ABC News report"Pressure for Qld FOI changes to go national"includes comments by Rick Snell and me on the AM program this morning:"University of Tasmania senior law lecturer Rick Snell says if implemented the changes will fundamentally transform the state from defaulting towards secrecy to virtually always defaulting towards openness...

Sunlight sinking in the west

Posted on June 07, 2008
Keryn McKinnon in The West Australian quotes the highly respected former Information Commissioner Bronwyn Keighly-Gerardy on the state of things in the west, where proposed but long delayed legislation will transfer review powers to the administrative tribunal:?Right from word go, the FOI Act has always been slanted in favour of them (the government)...

Data matching and privacy concerns

Posted on June 06, 2008
In March, reports surfaced of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority providing Medicare with a list of athletes? names and asking Medicare to search through its files in order to identify possible users of steroids and human growth hormones. A worthy objective maybe, but there was a flurry of concern at the time about whether there had been proper consideration given to the privacy issues concerning health information held by Medicare...

Cabinet committees disclosed-earth does not move.

Posted on June 05, 2008
In April a Queensland academic reported no luck in getting information about Federal Government cabinet committees. Last week when asked in Senate Estimates Cabinet Secretary John Faulkner was happy to oblige:"Senator MINCHIN?Can I ask the minister if the government has formally published a list of all cabinet committees and their membership?Senator Faulkner?I am not sure whether it has been published, but I am certainly happy to provide it for you if you would like...

Slowly, slowly for FOI reform

Posted on June 05, 2008
Three Freedom of Information issues were raised in the Senate Estimates Finance and Public Administration hearings on 27 May(transcript pages 93-96). All in all, government responses were disappointingly laid back and indicate that even basic questions on whether there will be public consultation on the detail of reform proposals are yet to be addressed...

Access to advice-perennial question,perennial answer

Posted on June 05, 2008
Battles raged in many of the Senate Estimates Committee hearings over the last two weeks, with the prominent players engaging from a different perspective as they settle into new roles of government and opposition. The battles of course have a familiar ring, with one constant the often unsuccessful attempt to get answers to questions about advice, usually dismissed simply on the grounds that the question goes to advice provided to the government or a minister...

Victorian Police leak no breach of "legal duty"

Posted on June 04, 2008
Victorian Police operate under a more forgiving law than Federal public servants regarding disclosure of information acquired in the course of duties.The Chief Justice of the Victorian Supreme Court has ruled that a police officer did not breach regulations when she responded to a request from a friend wishing to contest a speeding charge by sending copies of police manuals for the operation of speed detection devices...

Courier Mail scorecard

Posted on June 03, 2008
Six of 40 requests to Queensland government agencies for information about matters impacting on the community, all previously refused following Freedom of Information and other applications, have now been answered. That means 34 haven't. The Courier Mail is keeping track here.

The right to know your surgeon's track record

Posted on June 02, 2008
Health professionals all know which surgeons to go to and which ones to avoid. Not so most members of the public.The following letter was published in The Guardian last week. NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher and others who continue to drag their feet about disclosure of information about the health system here may need a stiff dose of the smelling salts if this crosses their desk...

Leaks illustrate need for policy debate and resolution

Posted on June 02, 2008
Last week's leaks of a letter between ministerial colleagues, and the co-ordination comments from four major policy departments, on a cabinet submission on the FuelWatch program raised a number of issues.The Australian Federal Police were called in to investigate; the Prime Minister said the public service was to blame for the departmental leak but in any event he favours policy contestability and debate about the issues; Matthew Moore in the Sydney Morning Herald wonders why we were surprised there were differing views within government about the proposal, but is concerned "(t)his is the moment bureaucrats and staff will whisper in ministerial ears that easing the FoI laws will lead to more advice becoming public and more troublesome stories about government splits"; and John McDonnell in The Australian says that if a public servant is behind this, a basic element in the trust relationship between ministers and public servants -never leak-has been broken...

There are leaks......and leaks.

Posted on June 02, 2008
The Australian Financial Review at the weekend reported on some of the current thinking in one government agency about dealing with Freedom of Information applications, based on "leaked notes about a briefing "provided to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forests...

2020 Summit Final Report

Posted on June 01, 2008
The Final Report of the 2020 Summit was released (without fanfare-not even a media release) on Saturday and is available in a number of formats. The report-all 399 pages- was prepared by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet from the notes of scribes who recorded discussions of the 10 groups...

Cain's call to enable FOI laws

Posted on May 27, 2008
Former Victorian Premier John Cain, responsible for the Freedom of Information Act introduced in that state in 1983, has added his voice to those calling for improvement in the laws and the way they operate. Cain says government contracting on the current scale was not contemplated at the time and confidentiality claims hide important information that should be publicly available.

Access to legal advice-the more things change.....

Posted on May 27, 2008
Senate Estimates committee hearings on the Federal Budget commenced in Canberra this week, just as the Government was dealing with its first embarrassing leak. And, as the investigation got underway, plenty of reminders that it is yet to deliver on its whistleblower protection promises ...

Houses not in order

Posted on May 26, 2008
Picking up on the UK disclosures, does it really matter that we don't know much about payments from the public purse to members of parliament, and how each has spent the money?In my view its"Accountability 101". Payments to ministers, as such, are usually accessible under freedom of information laws as relevant documents are held by the minister or the agency for which they have responsibility...

Call for FOI review in Tasmania

Posted on May 26, 2008
Tasmania has a new Premier-but, mind you, it's nothing to do with "shreddergate" or other governance related recent scandals. Just before Premier Lennon took the great leap forward, the Ombudsman joined Rick Snell and Australia's Right to Know on ABC TV's Stateline last Friday in calling for a review of the state's Freedom of Information Act...

FOI delivers parliamentary accountability-in UK

Posted on May 25, 2008
The House of Commons has released the documents containing information about how some members spend the allowance they receive when parliamentary duty requires those of them from other places to be in London, following the High Court decision referred to on this blog last week and the subject of Matthew Moore's column in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday...

Good news and no news on transparency and accountability

Posted on May 25, 2008
The good news is that Minister of State John Faulkner's announcement of the first stage in electoral law reform saw legislation introduced into the Parliament on 15 May toReduce the disclosure threshold for donors, registered political parties, candidates and others from ?more than $10,000? (indexed annually to the CPI) to a flat rate of $1,000...

Bloggers (and others), the future is yours!

Posted on May 23, 2008
Where are we bloggers on the edge of politics going, what sort of clout might we come to exercise, is new technology changing, for better or worse, the nature of dialogue about what's going on, or should be going on around us? I have just signed up for this Microsoft sponsored opportunity to hear Matt Bai from the US and some interesting Australian panelists discuss these issues in Canberra on 25 June...

NSW ADT sticks to "disclosure to the world" but policy needs rethinking

Posted on May 22, 2008
The Appeal Panel of the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal in Cheney v Sydney West Area Health Service (2008) NSWADTAP 29 has decided that disclosure of documents to an applicant under the NSW Freedom of Information Act is "disclosure to the world", and that this prospect needs to be taken into account in determining whether disclosure of a document containing information about the personal affairs of a person to another would be unreasonable...

A tale of two tax stories

Posted on May 21, 2008
The latest edition of "Open Government:a journal on Freedom of Information" includes a comparative case study by Dr Judith Bannister of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne of two freedom of information applications for tax policy related documents to treasury departments in the United Kingdom and Australia...

ALRC to recommend privacy data breach notification requirement

Posted on May 21, 2008
We'll be hearing a lot more about this when the report is released, but Australian Law Reform Commission President David Weisbrot told a conference yesterday that the review of privacy laws will include a recommendation for a notification requirement for personal data breaches that involve a real risk of harm.

Haneef detention-1300 documents and still counting

Posted on May 19, 2008
Dr Haneef's legal team did not come up empty handed after seeking documents under the Freedom of Information Act held about their client's detention- some 1300 pages of sometimes heavily edited documents were released, and Crikey has posted them on the web...

No stopping big brother

Posted on May 19, 2008
The Federal Government claimed a "saving" of $1.2 billion over four years in last week's budget for ditching (last December) the Howard Government's National Access Card, but there is no stopping exploration of the wonders of technology, ie data matching...

NSW Premier not commited to FOI reform

Posted on May 18, 2008
The following Q and A in the NSW Parliament last Thursday, saw the Premier play straight bat when asked for a commitment to act on the recommendations to come from the Ombudsman's review:Ms CLOVER MOORE: I direct my question to the Premier. Given that the New South Wales Freedom of Information Act is based on principles developed more than 30 years ago and that it has been the subject of more than 60 amendments, and given the poor rate of freedom of information releases in New South Wales, will the New South Wales Government commit to implementing the Ombudsman's recommendations following his review of the Act?Mr MORRIS IEMMA: As the member quite correctly states, the Ombudsman has commenced a review...

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