International Law

Chance to lift parliamentarians game with taxpayers' money

Posted on August 25, 2010
Maybe there's a chance that the new influences at work in the Federal Parliament will, along with other much needed governance reforms, force action regarding transparency and accountability for payments to and expenditure by members and senators. This from the Sunshine Coast Daily is further evidence of the problem, if any is needed...

FOI throws up another Chamberlain mystery

Posted on August 25, 2010
Nick Calacouros in the Northern Terrritory News (no link available) reports NT Chief Justice Brian Martin has joined Chester Porter QC, counsel assisting the Morling Royal Commission that exonerated the Chamberlains, in expressing surprise and dismay that jury notes from the Lindy Chamberlain trial ended up in the police file relating to the case...

Future payments to government "commercial in confidence"?

Posted on August 25, 2010
What constitutes "commercial in confidence" seems likely to get an early work out from the NSW Information Commissioner if the Sydney Morning Herald follows through on its editorial  today (the second in this link) about the publication of a $6 billion agreement between the Barangaroo Delivery Authority and developers Lend Lease published this week, stripped the Herald says, of almost all financial information...

FOI report lost in transmission in Queensland AGs office?

Posted on August 24, 2010
Government releases FOI access report is one of those headlines that attracts our attention, but it turned out to be an ABC report based on a Media Release by Queensland Attorney General Dick on the operation of the Freedom of Information Act for the period to 30 June last year...

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Integrity agenda for the king makers

Posted on August 24, 2010
With a handful of independents and a Green in the box seat to determine who governs, and some suggesting "doing government and parliament differently" is at the centre of concerns, here's an off the top of the head list of things worth throwing into the mix...

Victorian Law Reform Commission adds voice to call for privacy rights

Posted on August 23, 2010
The Victorian Law Reform Commission is the third law reform commission to propose legislation to clear up uncertainty in the law, by recommending legislation to create a right to legal recourse in the event of a serious breach of privacy. The recommendation in the commission report, Surveilllance in Public Places, comes on the heels of former Prime Minister Paul Keating's recent speech outlining and supporting the case for legislative action made by the Australian and NSW law reform commissions two years ago, neither of which has had a government response...

WA Supreme Court upholds Information Commissioner's decision

Posted on August 22, 2010
Justice Kevin Martin of the Western Australian Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by the Water Corporation against a decision by the Information Commissioner that had allowed access under the Freedom of Information Act to the full content of valuation reports by licensed valuers in respect of portions of the respondents' land the Corporation was seeking to acquire...

Election cliff hanger sees good government in the frame

Posted on August 22, 2010
Who would have thought that good governance, accountability and transparency and doing something to improve the way parliament works would be back on the agenda, now that a small group of kingmakers in the House of Representatives get to decide who governs after the Federal election deadlock sees the major parties with a likely 73 seats apiece? These are some of the issues that matter to the likes of  independents such as Oakeshott and Windsor, now joined by Wilkie, and The Greens Bandt, the last named with plenty of sage advice from colleagues in the Senate who have always been on about such things, and will number nine from next July when joined by former NSW MLC Rhiannon who strongly pursued similar issues while in office there...

Trust hard to win, easy to lose, the message for whoever wins the election

Posted on August 19, 2010
One of the Prime Minister's problems, given the circumstances in which she came to office, ALP woes at the state level in Queensland and NSW, and the fact that all politicians are starting from a low base, is said to be lack of public trust. According to Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald, the PM has three strings to her bow in trying to deal with this issue, one of which involves listing her achievements as Education Minister including more transparency for school performance through the My School website...

ID card back on Opposition's agenda

Posted on August 19, 2010
So reports The Age, but just what's involved and how this fits with a decision to shelve e-health record plans until good economic times, who knows?

Victoria commits to action on Gov 2.0

Posted on August 17, 2010
While Victoria lags on freedom of Information reform, it seems to be moving ahead of the other states on Gov 2.0 - someone needs to connect some dots here - releasing last week an Action Plan to focus on four priority action areas: Leadership, Participation, Transparency and Performance...

Election briefs for government MPs/candidates none of anyone else's business

Posted on August 16, 2010
 Markus Mannheim in the Canberra Times today:"The Federal Government has used the public service to prepare secret reports on every Australian electorate, in breach of its own policy. Eight government departments have confirmed they wrote the reports - detailed analyses of all spending in each MP's seat - but refuse to make them public...

Transparency the order of the day for food hygiene

Posted on August 16, 2010
With the Sydney Morning Herald reporting that 140 food businesses have been added to the NSW register for breach of food hygiene standards in the last 30 days"NSW Primary Industries Minister, Steve Whan said the name-and-shame list, maintained as a partnership between the state government and local councils, had proved an effective measure in raising hygiene standards...

Some Victorian agencies just do their own FOI thing

Posted on August 16, 2010
Ombudsman George BrouwerThere is a tone of "when will they ever.." in the Victorian Ombudsman's introductory comments in the chapter on Freedom of Information (page  50) in the Annual Report 2009-2010 published last week, and it's 26 years since the FOI act commenced in that state...

Decision 2010 sees Opposition up for journalist shield laws

Posted on August 15, 2010
In the Attorney General's debate, Opposition shadow Senator Brandis also reiterated the Coalition's commitment to act on shield laws for journalists:Another area in which the Government has been all talk and no action is journalists? shield laws. The introduction of such laws was a Labor promise in 2007...

Decision 2010 and Freedom of Information

Posted on August 15, 2010
The Attorney General's debate on Friday saw Opposition shadow Senator George Brandis announce an FOI initiative, but otherwise there has been no mention during the campaign about this or related transparency and accountabilty issues. Brandis said:".. a Coalition Government will transfer responsibility for freedom of information laws from the Special Minister of State to the Attorney-General?s portfolio and a pro-disclosure culture will be observed in fact not merely in rhetoric...

Governing differently or better hardly visible in Decision 2010

Posted on August 15, 2010
In an election campaign where the debate has mainly been about small item features of the country's future, there have been few references to a big picture of what the future could be. Leaders of the main parties haven't mentioned much about governing differently or better, apart from Prime Minister Gillard promising to reinstate proper cabinet processes, and Opposition leader Abbott momentarily channelling Kevin Rudd in saying (at the Rooty Hill Forum) he would not be overridden by colleagues in the cabinet room...

VCAT review of vexatious litigant's FOI request not an abuse of process

Posted on August 12, 2010
Julian Knight, who murdered seven people and injured 19 in Melbourne in the Hoddle St massacre of 1987 has been granted permission to seek review of a Freedom of Information decision by Corrections Victoria (part of the Department of Justice) to refuse him access to his prison file, sought to help him prepare to seek parole when he becomes eligible in 2014...

E-health on, but not for the Opposition while the budget is in the red

Posted on August 11, 2010
The Coalition's proposed saving of $467 million from scrapping the  Government's e-health record plans mightn't be forever, according to this report by Karen Dearne in The Australian-just till the budget is back in surplus- but the Australian Medical Association said it should be an absolute priority,  and the Australian Privacy Foundation has a single, coherent and contextual e-health policy at the top of the election wishlist.

In pursuit of NSW Police policy on pursuits.

Posted on August 10, 2010
On reading this report by Geesche Jacobsen in the Sydney Morning Herald, I was thinking the NSW Police might have had a point that some information about pursuit policy needed to be withheld under the new GIPA act on grounds that disclosure of eight of nine reasons for terminating a pursuit would compromise a ''lawful method and technique employed by the NSW Police Force ? to detect and investigate contraventions of the criminal law...

"We're politicians- trust us with your personal information!"

Posted on August 09, 2010
US Postal ServiceAs you are inundated with often personal mail, phone and email messages about how to vote on 21 August, and scratch your head about how well attuned some of these messages are to your personal circumstances, a reminder that the Commonwealth Privacy Act does not apply to registered political parties or to political representatives engaging in certain activities ?in the political process...

Victorian Police agreements on information exchanges-what's the point?

Posted on August 09, 2010
Last December when the issue of agreements between the Victorian Police and Aquasure about exchange of information first arose, this post asked "what goes?" An editorial in today's Age raises the same question after a freedom of information request by the state opposition revealed 36 ''memorandums of understanding'' between the police and external agencies, including the AFL...

Media doesn't do enough to police, prevent or penalise privacy intrusions

Posted on August 08, 2010
So says Mark Day in his column in The Australian today, the first mention in News Ltd publications of the Keating speech last Wednesday on the media and privacy. Day accepts "that the checks and balances of the existing system, which Keating says are self-serving and inadequate, are sometimes not enough to police and prevent privacy intrusions, or to penalise them...

Keating puts the case for some privacy in the face of "media free for all"

Posted on August 04, 2010
AAPIn a speech last night at the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne, former Prime Minister Paul Keating while acknowledging the importance of freedom of expression, urged industry leaders to drop the pretence that the current framework within which the media deals with privacy issues is effective and works well; suggested some practical steps to return privacy to its proper place in the ethics, professional standards and self regulatory systems that apply to journalism; and argued the case for a statutory cause of action for a serious and unwarranted breach of privacy, as recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2008...

ICAC recommends Parliament look again at corruption risk in payments to members

Posted on August 02, 2010
And more transparency might be seen to be part of the equation.The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption has questioned whether the NSW Parliament has in place a sufficiently comprehensive program to identify and manage corruption risks in relation to the use of Members? allowances and entitlements...

Australia's FOI reform landscape

Posted on August 02, 2010
If you are interested in some detail about Freedom of Information reforms around the country over the last year, these notes are from my brief overview before facilitating a panel session involving the Commonwealth, NSW, Queensland and Western Australian information commissioners at the recent National Administrative Law Forum in Sydney on 23 July...

State of SA bridges out in the open

Posted on August 01, 2010
A year ago the South Australian Ombudsman described a decision by the Transport Services Department to refuse access to safety reports about bridges on grounds disclosure would aid terrorists, as absurd, irrational and ridiculous.The reports of 22 bridges rated "fair", "poor" or "unsafe" have now been released, presumably as a result of the Ombudsman's report...

Black letter law approach at Victoria's Planning Department

Posted on July 30, 2010
You would expect notes taken by an officer during a meeting between a planning minister and the proponent of a development would not record anything other than what was said during the meeting, certainly nothing of a personal nature about the note taker, and that there would be no question notes would be covered by the freedom of information act...

Queensland in the lead with RTI day plans

Posted on July 27, 2010
The Office of the Queensland Information Commissioner has announced the program for the 2010 Right to Information Day in Brisbane, including the second annual Solomon Lecture on 27 September, and a Forum the next day featuring a range of speakers including Beth Noveck (Leader of President Obama's open government reforms), Dr Nicholas Gruen (Chair of Government 2...

Last gasp for "confusion and unneccessary debate" argument?

Posted on July 26, 2010
Well there may be others still to come, but the clock is ticking down to 1 November when changes to the Freedom of Information Act should see this claim as a public interest against disclosure under the Commonwealth act despatched to the bin. In the meantime as reported by Ben Grubb in the Sydney Morning Herald it gets a prominent run arising from an application to the Attorney General's Department for documents distributed to representatives of the internet industry during consultations in March on a proposal that would require ISPs to store certain internet activities of all Australians - regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing - for law-enforcement agencies to access...

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