International Law

Shreddergate in Tasmania

Posted on April 09, 2008
Here is the Mercury's update on Tasmania's "shreddergate", including the reconstructed document that the Deputy Premier tried to disappear, after telling Parliament that the decision it recorded him making had never been made.If Kons had succeeded, the only remaining record would have been the Department's submission recommending the appointment...

Feds confirm conclusive certificate powers to go

Posted on April 09, 2008
Here is what the Acting Prime Minister told the Maritime Union of Australia yesterday about work going on within the Government on the issue of conclusive certificates, including whether anything should be done concerning certificates issued years ago that are still current and protect documents about the Howard Government involvement in the 1998 waterfront battle...

NSW Tribunal rules on FOI whisleblower exemption

Posted on April 09, 2008
The Appeal Panel of the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal has adopted a narrower interpretation than in previous cases of the exemption in the Freedom of Information Act for"matter relating to a protected disclosure within the meaning of the Protected Disclosure Act 1994" (Clause 20(1)(d))...

Minister Faulkner puts privacy law reform on the priority list

Posted on April 09, 2008
A strong commitment to privacy reform including uniform laws from the Government yesterday, as outlined in this article in The Australian. Special Minister of State John Faulkner in his speech also spoke of work underway within APEC on a co-operative scheme on privacy complaint handling that may help to some degree with cross border issues...

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FOI in the slow lane in WA

Posted on April 08, 2008
In the fast moving state of Western Australia, some things hardly move at all-like the Government's Freedom of Information Amendment Bill, still awaiting debate in the Legislative Council 13 months after it was introduced into the Assembly by the Attorney General...

The farce is on us

Posted on April 08, 2008
Who knows how many applications to the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal for review of Freedom of Information decisions are failing because the applicant did not act within 60 days from when the agency should have, but didn't, respond to a request for internal review? Experienced hands at the Sydney Morning Herald have now suffered the same fate as the applicant in this case mentioned here a couple of weeks ago...

Some more concerns about 2020 Summit papers

Posted on April 07, 2008
Following on from the comment here yesterday about the Governance topic, Henry Ergas in today's Australian points out some problems with other 2020 Summit background papers.

Wharfies try again but documents still secret

Posted on April 06, 2008
The Maritime Union of Australia, on the 10th anniversary of the Howard Government intervention in the waterfront dispute, has raised the issue of access to documents that would show thinking within the government that led to the drama. Under the Howard Government access to most documents had been denied on various grounds and had been the subject of a conclusive certificate that the documents were exempt...

Some shortcomings in the 2020 Summit background paper on Governance

Posted on April 06, 2008
The background paper and questions on Governance issued to 'trigger conversation both before and during the 2020 Summit' may just do that, but they won't help shape discussion at the Summit itself. In fact by making some disputed claims, and not providing background information on some important elements of the topic, they could make dialogue and consensus on a whole range of complex issues even more difficult...

Modest progress on lobbyists register

Posted on April 03, 2008
Special Minister of State Senator John Faulkner has released a draft code of conduct on lobbying that incorporates a public register of names and the interests they represent.While the proposed scheme is a step forward, it's classic 'light touch' regulation and won't go far in assisting the public to know what goes on as influence peddlers go about their business...

Nothing to show for four months of thinking about FOI reform

Posted on April 03, 2008
The Rudd Government was sworn into office 4 months ago today. Frenetic is the best word to describe the work rate of the Prime Minister and his team during this period. But Freedom of Information is one of the few areas where we are still to see any public indication of the Government's progress on plans for reform...

Victoria's Virgin bid also off limits

Posted on April 02, 2008
And yes folks, details of Victoria's unsuccesful bid for Virgin Blue's business are.......confidential.

Excessive secrecy surrounds government business dealings

Posted on April 02, 2008
Lots of drum roll and fanfare yesterday with the announcement that Sydney has been chosen as the regional hub for Virgin Blue, and its new international V Australia will be flying daily between Sydney and Los Angeles. More jobs, more tourists, great benefits to the taxpayer all got a run the when the Prime Minister signed an agreement in Washington, and the NSW Premier proudly announced a Sydney victory over other competitors...

And the best FOI Law is........Mexico!

Posted on April 02, 2008
UNESCO has published the second edition of a comparative survey of FOI laws by Toby Mendel, the Law Programme Director with ARTICLE 19, the human rights NGO based in London. Mendel traces the development of international law concerning the right to access information, and uses uses a set of principles to assess regional trends and country specific access to government information laws in 14 countries( not including Australia)...

2020 Governance discussion could prove challenging for the Chairs

Posted on April 01, 2008
Phillip Adams, a participant in the Governance Group at the 2020 Summit, tells us today that he didn't apply, didn't know he'd been nominated by anyone else, and didn't hear a word from anyone until he read his name in the paper on Saturday. He says he'll now have to think about the topic, but as he usually goes to sleep in meetings of this kind, his participation may be limited...

Proposed political donation reform hardly best practice

Posted on March 31, 2008
It's well and good that Special Minister of State John Faulkner has announced plans to introduce legislation to fix some aspects of the loopholes in laws relating to political donations and public funding, but it's hardly a big deal that disclosures will be required every six months rather than once a year...

A few names of great potential contributors lost

Posted on March 30, 2008
Another thought on the Governance Group for the 2020 Summit.What a pity there was also no room at the inn for Andrew Podger, President of the Australian Institute of Public Administration and a distinguished former public servant who has spoken up about the need for greater transparency; Jack Waterford of the Canberra Times, with a long history of involvement in government watching and FOI; Professor Meredith Edwards, of the School of Governance at the University of Canberra and former Deputy Secretary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; Tony Harris, former NSW Auditor General and Financial Review columnist and Dr...

Governance group 2020 Summit participants

Posted on March 30, 2008
The PM must have taken the entire Government PR team with him to Washington on Friday morning. How else to explain that the list of attendees at the 2020 Summit was announced at 11am that day, but at 5pm there was still no sign of the list on the Government's 2020 website? The only way of knowing who was in was the full list published by the Australian? (The list appeared subsequently)...

Carter Center call to action on FOI

Posted on March 27, 2008
The Atlanta Declaration and Plan of Action for the Advancement of the Right of Access to Information has been published this week, the follow on from the conference organised by the Carter Center in February and attended by invited experts and interested parties including Australia's Rick Snell...

FOI study for radio journalist

Posted on March 25, 2008
Congratulations to Elizabeth Jackson of ABC Radio, (as the ABC tells us - not to be confused with Liz Jackson) the recipient of a scholarship to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford, to look at international Freedom of Information developments and investigative journalism...

Our right to know about public hospitals and public schools

Posted on March 25, 2008
Andrew Leigh of Australian National University was right a couple of weeks ago (see our comments) in his observations about the importance of transparency concerning performance of hospitals. He was also right yesterday in another op-ed in the Australian Financial Review in highlighting four core notions about public funding for school education, including that "taxpayers who fund (the) schools have a right to demand that they provide empirical data such as test scores, drop out rates, or parental satisfaction surveys"; and that funding provided should be sufficiently transparent to enable parents to know precisely how much government funding their school receives as a result of their child's enrolment...

More run run, runaround

Posted on March 25, 2008
Same old dog, still chasing tail.All you can say after reading this decision of the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal is that in addition to patience, persistence, time, energy, resources and a passable knowledge of the law, any FOI applicant who may be heading towards independent review also needs a calendar and a prompt system to alert them when an agency has failed to make a determination under the Freedom of Information Act...

When a Tribunal is not a tribunal

Posted on March 25, 2008
The Chief Justice of the Western Australian Supreme Court has confirmed the decision of the Acting Information Commissioner that the Salaries and Allowances Tribunal is not "a court or tribunal" for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act, and found no error of law in the Acting Commissioner's decision to grant access to a report by Mercer consultants on senior public service pay - now some years old...

Wisdom of some advice to PM not self evident

Posted on March 24, 2008
Robert Manne of LaTrobe University, photo abc.net.au"Dear Mr. Rudd, Ideas for a Better Australia", edited by Robert Manne is packed full of bright ideas on 19 topics relevant to the 2020 Summit in April, even though Manne and his contributors kicked all this off in the middle of last year...

Media almost missed MPs privately sponsored travel

Posted on March 24, 2008
Most observers (including me) were surprised at developments last week that revealed it was commonplace for members of parliament to accept sponsored travel from private interests. The hot issue was the revelation that the Prime Minister when Opposition Spokesman on Foreign Affairs had accepted travel paid by Beijing AustChina for a number of trips to China and other destinations such as the US, UK and Sudan...

New deadline for ALRC privacy report

Posted on March 23, 2008
Those expecting, anticipating or dreading the release of the Australian Law Reform Commission Final Report on Privacy, have a couple of extra months to contemplate or prepare - the Commission's deadline has been extended from the end of March until the end of May...

NSW FOI 20 years on

Posted on March 20, 2008
Former Premier Nick GreinerThe Sydney Morning Herald today has published my opinion piece on the Greiner government's grand ambitions in introducing Freedom of Information legislation in NSW 20 years ago - to reduce corruption, strengthen democracy, increase accountability, encourage a more active citizenry, help the public make more informed judgments at election time, and improve government decision making...

No new dawn for openness in Federal Treasury.....yet

Posted on March 17, 2008
Government watchers sat bolt upright last Friday when the Secretary of the Treasury intervened in the public debate about the Federal Government's submission to the Fair Pay Tribunal with a Press Release No. 2 2008 - Advice on the Government Submission to the Australian Fair Pay Commission confirming that Treasury advice to the Government had not stipulated a dollar figure for the minimum wage review...

Not just a poor week for open government in NSW

Posted on March 17, 2008
Saturday's editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald opened with the sentence "This has been a poor week for open government" in NSW and went on to outline developments on a number of fronts to prove the point. That's only half of it. There is plenty of evidence of an ongoing culture of secrecy...

Federal Ministerial staff told to reveal all

Posted on March 16, 2008
The requirement for the Victorian Police to reveal their dodgy mates was one thing, but a 25 page Federal Government security clearance form that requires disclosure of information about intimate details of private life, apparently to protect ministerial staff from blackmail threats, is something else...

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