Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I join with my Labor colleagues in opposing the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014. As noted, this bill amends the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and repeals the Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010, as well as making consequential changes to other legislation, for the purposes of implementing the Abbott government's 2014-15 budget measure 'Smaller Government—Privacy and Freedom of Information functions—new arrangements'. The bill will repeal a number of incredibly sensible amendments that were introduced by the Rudd government in 2009 and 2010 to improve transparency across government by strengthening the freedom of information regime and establishing the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or the OAIC.

Specifically, the bill seeks to abolish the OAIC and the positions of Australian Information Commissioner and Freedom of Information Commissioner; provide for an Australian Privacy Commissioner as an independent statutory office holder within the Australian Human Rights Commission, AHRC; provide that external merits review of FOI decisions will only be available at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal; provide for the Attorney-General to be responsible for FOI guidelines, collection of FOI statistics and the annual report on the operation of the FOI Act in place of the Information Commissioner; and, finally, provide for the Commonwealth Ombudsman to be solely responsible for investigating complaints about FOI administration.

This is a bill from a government that continues to try to pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian people. The measures in this bill are very much in keeping with this government's preferred modus operandi of silence and secrecy. This is a government that says one thing before the election and does the exact opposite after being elected, a government that announces and acts without consultation and then draws up the veil of secrecy to hide behind—when it suits them, that is. It is a government determined to block the public from knowing what they are doing and how their actions will affect those to be impacted.

The government's first budget was so cruel that it is little wonder that members opposite tried hard to bury as much of the detail as possible. A glaring example was, of course, the failure to publish a Women's Budget Statement for the first time since 1984. Rather than deal with the impact their budget would have on women up-front, they tried to bury the detail in volumes of budget papers. The Women's Budget Statement was introduced 30 years ago has an important equity measure to single out initiatives that directly target women.

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