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International Law

Open and Shut

Issues associated with Freedom of Information (FOI) and privacy legislation in Australia as well as privacy issues generally.

Post Frequency: 4/day

Last Entry: October 30, 2020 at 10:02:02

Red book No 7: AGs incoming government brief released but hardly visible

Posted on December 13, 2010
Thanks for the tip from a reader, perhaps alerted by this AAP report today, that the Attorney General's Department incoming government brief (heavily redacted) has been published and located. Not up on the Department's website along with a statement about how the Department is glad of the opportunity to inform public discussion of matters of great moment, but buried away in a pile of documents requested by senators during the estimates hearings...

Walkley award winner found prize in Defence contract documents

Posted on December 12, 2010
Congratulations to all the Walkley Award 2010 winners for excellence in journalism, particularly to Linton Besser of the Sydney Morning Herald who showed the errors in the information age of that old journalistic notion that there's no story in it if its publicly available...

FOI "burden" the price of democracy in Ken Henry's awful year

Posted on December 12, 2010
Treasury Secretary Ken Henry was reported in The Australian last week talking to a "private audience" about his department under stress and the awful year 2010 had been. He returned to a familiar theme, the downside of FOI: The growing burden of the Freedom of Information process had only compounded the stresses on the department, Dr Henry told the gathering...

WikiLeaks and the implications at home and abroad

Posted on December 10, 2010
Here's Professor A.J Brown and me with Carson Scott On the Record on Sky Business today talking about WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, the right to know, and comparisons between the US and Australia. And in this segment with James White talking about transparency in China and Australia and what governments know- and we should know-about the performance of the economy...

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Leaking and publishing are two different things

Posted on December 09, 2010
Australia's leading academic on whistleblower protection Professor A J Brown of Griffith University Law School,gave the keynote address to the Annual General Meeting of Transparency International Australia, in Sydney tonight. Professor Brown said: "Trying to target and control Julian Assange is not likely to be an effective response to these leaks, in either the short or long term...

Mr Assange regrets...

Posted on December 07, 2010
Timing is everything. US State Department announcement yesterday:"The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO?s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press...

Neither secrecy nor openness in international affairs should be absolutes.

Posted on December 07, 2010
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration." ?President Barack Obama, January 21, 2009 This statement appears at the top of the US State Department web page headed "Open Government Initiative...

Red book 6: Health and Ageing incoming government brief published

Posted on December 03, 2010
The Department of Health and Ageing has published a redacted version of its incoming government brief (four volumes) with this interesting first- hopefully the second version will be marked up so the changes resulting from the 1 November changes to exemption provisions are readily apparent, providing useful learning all round:Given the interest in the brief, the Department has decided to publish on its website the brief with redactions based on exemptions that apply to FOI requests made before 1 November 2010...

Senate consideration of journalists' shield law slips to 2011

Posted on December 01, 2010
I've laboured over a long piece on this but ****!!! its disappeared into the ethernet. The short version: The Wilkie bill didn't come on for consideration in the final week of sittings after the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee reported and recommended the bill...

State of Service report opaque about culture of transparency

Posted on November 30, 2010
The annual State of the Service report issued by the Australian Public Service Commission and the accompanying State of the Service Employee Survey 2009-2010 provide useful insights into attitudes and approaches of our public servants. Overall the Commission concludes "that APS performance compares well with that of its peers...

Baillieu declares new era of no spin, no secrecy

Posted on November 30, 2010
Victorian Premier Elect Ted Baillieu yesterday with words worth recording even though there has to be some hyperbole in the "no secrecy" commitment:Under a Baillieu Government, what you see is what you will get. There will be no hidden agendas, there will be no spin, there will be no secrecy...

Wikileaks likely set back to open government cause

Posted on November 30, 2010
Regardless of whether you agree with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the latest Wikileaks document dump is "an attack on the international community," Foreign Minister Rudd's expression of extreme concern" or Attorney General McClelland calling in the police to investigate whether Julian Assange has committed a crime, the release of cables sent by US missions abroad won't help advance the cause of more openness in the foreign policy field...

Experienced FOI hand set to be Vic Minister for FOI

Posted on November 28, 2010
With the Coalition to take office after Saturday's election in Victoria, The Age reports on the likely cabinet line up. In Andrew McIntosh Victoria will have a Minister for Corrections, Crime Prevention, Freedom of Information, and Integrity, if he retains the same responsibilities he carried in opposition...

Disclosure of payments to pollies- improving, could do even better

Posted on November 26, 2010
Reports on entitlements paid by the Department of Finance and Deregulation during the period January-June 2010 for and of behalf of Federal parliamentarians and former parliamentarians, and overseas travel reports by parliamentarians were tabled yesterday and are available here...

Foreign affairs and the challenge of open government

Posted on November 25, 2010
The Lowy Institute Policy brief on E-diplomacy by Fergus Hanson points out how the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade could and should embrace internet technology in pursuing diplomatic objectives by improving internal debate, communication with stakeholders and public diplomacy through web presence, social media, blogs and wikis...

Ponemon in Sydney next week

Posted on November 25, 2010
From the organisers: The third annual iappANZ Australiasian Privacy Conference, to be held 30 November in Sydney, will focus on a key topic for privacy and IT professionals, "Silver Lining: The Privacy Umbrella of Cloud Computing." This one-day event will feature opportunities for debate, information sharing and discussion among professionals dealing with or exploring the "cloud" with keynote speakers, including Larry Ponemon, CIPP, and expert-led forums...

Accountability Roundtable digs out some answers in Victoria

Posted on November 25, 2010
Things moved during the week from one side talking in the Victorian election about accountability and transparency to all the parties being prepared to say something-when asked. Tim Smith QC chairman of the Accountability Roundtable, writing in The Age today said there is cause for hope about improvement regardless of who wins the election on Saturday, in the light of answers to questions posed to the parties...

No worries, no hurry, on privacy reform

Posted on November 24, 2010
The Age has had a scoop over the last two days with reports about voter profiles held by the ALP in its Victorian campaign data base, which once revealed came as a surprise to those affected, although information about the systems and processes has been around for years These systems to collect and use personal information in campaigns and other activities continue because the Privacy Act does not apply to registered political parties or to political representatives engaged in certain activities "in the political process...

Privacy issues when the police come calling

Posted on November 24, 2010
The report by Queensland Privacy Commissioner Linda Mathews following an own-motion investigation into police access to go-card data in the electronic ticketing system used in South East Queensland by Translink discovered no evidence of wrongdoing. Under the Information Privacy Act Translink had a discretion to respond by disclosing personal information to a law enforcement authority...

Penchant for darting and weaving over secrecy

Posted on November 24, 2010
The issue of parliament's powers and the resolution of disputes over production of documents remains for another day, but the release of this summary of the NBN business case overcame the immediate hurdle to progressing relevant legislation through the Senate...

One side talking about transparency in Victorian election

Posted on November 23, 2010
From this distance at least transparency and accountability and related issues don't appear to have been at the centre of things in the Victorian state election campaign, to finish with elections this Saturday. The ALP after 11 years in office seems content to say nothing about governance-the record to speak for itself, so to speak...

The Senate pursues the PM's "let the sun shine in" promise

Posted on November 22, 2010
Thadius856 & Parutakupiu via Wikimedia Commons We can expect more on public interest immunity as the week progresses, but there are three issues in play in disputes over the production of documents in response to senate orders: . the Australian Information Commissioner's opinion that without legislative amendment he has no powers to investigate or report on a government refusal to produce documents in parliament...

Dispute over tabling NBN document a harbinger of things to come

Posted on November 19, 2010
The stand off between the Government and the Senate (and one narrowly avoided in the House of Representatives) over the tabling of the NBN business case isn't the first and won't be the last where claims of public interest immunity arise in this parliament...

Housekeeping

Posted on November 16, 2010
There is now a subscribe by email option on the sidebar to add to the existing RSS feed choices. And talking of readers (well, looking for an excuse for a little skiting really) the National Library of Australia contacted me yesterday seeking permission to include Open and Shut in the PANDORA Archive that provides long-term access to online Australian publications.

Journalists run rings around the professions to protect confidential relationships

Posted on November 15, 2010
It will be interesting to see if debate in the Senate on a shield law for journalists picks up on the detailed analysis of the Wilkie and Brandis bills by Kirsty Magarey of the Parliamentary Library in this Bills Digest published last week. (PDF 338KB)...

Norfolk islanders still waiting

Posted on November 15, 2010
Plans to do wonders for the governance of Norfolk Island have been kicking around since May last year, when there were suggestions the territory was bordering on "failed state" status. Debate on the Territories Law Reform Bill to achieve change resumed in the House of Representatives yesterday...

Shield law for quick Senate committee inquiry

Posted on November 15, 2010
The Senate yesterday referred the shield law bills to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee for inquiry and report by 23 November. The hope is still to get this through before the parliament rises. Senator Brandis hopes it will facilitate passage of both bills in a harmonised form...

NSW ICAC proposes more transparency for lobbying activity

Posted on November 15, 2010
With the NSW Government in something approaching pre-election clean up mode the wide ranging changes proposed to lobbying regulation in this report from the Independent Commission Against Corruption may strike a chord. SBS reported the Premier as saying she will seek advice on the report, Opposition leader O'Farrell welcoming support for his plan to abolish success fees, the Greens in favour and-no surprise- one of the main business lobbies against...

Many NSW disclosure logs yet to disclose anything at all

Posted on November 14, 2010
Some journalists are concerned about losing the exclusive right, even for a brief period, to information obtained through the hard slog of a Freedom of Information application. The concerns arise as a result of the (coming in May 2011) Commonwealth requirement for an agency to post on the web within 10 working days documents released in response to a formal application under the Freedom of information Act-see here for an earlier comment...

"New disclosure czar hits ground running"

Posted on November 14, 2010
You can hear Peter Mares (with some FOI experiences of his own) in discussion with Australian Information Commissioner Professor John McMilllan on this week's ABC Radio National National Interest. Here's my summary of points of interest. Professor McMillan is upbeat about the prospects for lasting and effective open government reform, and says he's struck by the positive response from his hundreds of meetings with senior agency executives...

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