Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to put on the record my remarks around this excellent bill, the Freedom of Information Amendment (Requests and Reasons) Bill 2015, introduced to the Senate by my colleague Senator Joseph Ludwig, from Queensland. This place is certainly the house of the states. While Senator Ludwig is standing up for the people of Queensland, there has been plenty of participation by senators on this side of the chamber from a range of states who understand that, across this nation, we have a community craving some transparency and some accountability around the outrageous performances of this government in many, many areas. A fundamental part of good governance is being offered to the Senate through this bill today. Given that it does deal with transparency and given that it does advance the strength of Labor's belief in the need for access to information as a critical dimension of good governance, it is not surprising that those opposite, sadly, have stood up to oppose it.

This is a bill to make government more transparent. Freedom of information requests are a vital part of enabling people to find out what is going on with their government. It is a basic tenet of what makes our democracy strong. Shining a light on decisions should not hurt government; it should make it strive to be better. I want to repeat that: shining a light on decisions—and that is what freedom of information requests do: allow the scrutiny of decision making by the government to be open and available to members of the public and interested peak bodies that represent members of the public—should not hurt a government. It should constantly be part of the mindfulness of government that, 'Somebody could be looking at what I'm doing.' This whole concept of oversight is a critical part of a healthy democracy.

Amongst other things, this bill will require government agencies and ministers to publish the exact wording of each FOI request that is made. That matters because it will make it a lot clearer to those who are seeking information—and these things can happen quite simultaneously on different sides of the country. Australians might find that they have a particular interest in accessing information about health, around which there has been considerable obfuscation by this government so far. Two independent inquiries, if this bill is passed, will now be able to see the reasons for other FOI decisions. That has to be an improvement in this digital age, when access to information is timely and more possible. If there is any opposition from those opposite, you would have to question why they would want to do that except to make it more difficult for people to scrutinise them. In addition to the exact wording of each FOI request, ministers will be required to provide a statement of reasons from the decision maker as to why an FOI inquiry was rejected or redacted or only partially fulfilled, so that others can see the trail of information seeking that has gone on before they come to the task themselves.

I cannot see the Australian community having an issue with the process of creating a more open and transparent democracy for Australia. There cannot be community opposition to this, but certainly there is opposition from the government. That is because they are different. They are different from most of the Australian people, who believe in fairness, access to information and honesty. They are different from the Labor Party, who definitely believe in these things—and our action legislatively is proof of that. Labor are absolutely committed to the principles of freedom of information whether we are in government or in opposition. In fact, the freedom of information legislation was first proposed to the parliament in 1974—and that happened, not surprisingly, during the Labor government under the leadership of Prime Minister Whitlam. It was a transformative change to say that this is the people's house. This is a parliament that is open. It was a practical governmental action to allow transparency.

In 1983 in the foreword to the first annual report on the FOI Act, the then Labor Attorney-General, Gareth Evans, described the basic purposes of what FOI legislation should do. At that time he said it was there and vital:

He said it was there:

He said that FOI is there:

And he said that freedom of information legislation was vital:

These are principles that most Australians that I speak to absolutely believe in and would uphold. That is why such simple tenets of a basic democratic capacity to participate in your own government and find out what your government knows about you should not be opposed by those opposite. They are either for freedom and democracy or they are against it. And, sadly, we have been seeing too much of this negativity from the government and a shutting down of information through to the citizens of this country.

The Liberal Party, of course, have problems with this because they have shown day after day that they are the party of obfuscation, the party of opacity and the party that thrives by keeping people in the dark and away from the truth as much as possible. Without their smokescreen, they have very, very little cover. The secrecy that shrouds this government is absolutely appalling, and their resistance to this bill is just another way in which they can resist any transparency. For example, there is the secrecy around the $80 billion cuts to health and education and their determination to apply a methodology of distracting the Australian people from what they are actually doing. They are masters at the distractor factor, turning people's eyes, saying: 'Oh, have a look over this. Don't pay attention to that.' But with $80 billion dollars out of health and education in last year's budget and locked in in this year's budget—ultimately you cannot hide and run from things that are that big. But they will try.

This bill we have before us today could simply be described as a procedural bill. I do not think Senator Ludwig would mind me saying that there is very little that is sexy about this bill, and there may not be many people who want to pay attention to the debate of something that seems so dry. But at its heart is a fundamental belief in the right of every Australian to access information about the decision making of their government and the impact of that decision making and record keeping around their own lives as citizens of the nation.

This bill is just good government, but that is exactly why those opposite are so opposed to it—after 650 days of being in government, and not one of them good government. Making engagement easier, making inclusion easier, is not something this government has been interested in. Despite attempts from the minister to assist, sometimes members of the Australian public just cannot walk around Canberra for the leak of the information that they want. Sometimes they have to actually enter the bureaucratic maze of freedom of information requests with no guarantee that their request will result in an answer and, if it does not succeed, they have no way of finding out why. This bill seeks to amend that anomaly.

Currently, requests under the Freedom of Information Act can be refused, or documents may be edited with minimal justification. This leads to abuses of the system by denying reasonable requests for information, and these are a threat to the government because they are a threat to transparency. The amendment before us today will strengthen the existing legislation to deliver on these original core promises which were enshrined within the act, and to which I gave voice earlier when I gave recognition of Gareth Evans' articulation of the reason for this legislation.

The measures in this bill are designed to make government more transparent and fair to the community. The amendment will allow the public to see what requests have been made and why the documents were or were not released. Publishing the reason for decisions would allow for scrutiny of the departmental and ministerial decisions and open the door to further reform to allow review of requests by parties other than the initial applicants. Telling the community why something was not granted, redacted or withheld does not create terror. It does not create crime. It does not create instability. But a government that puts a black bag over information and answers does create a risk to our democracy. These changes will mean applicants seeking similar documents could build on each other's requests, which would also reduce any duplication of requests and save on administrative time in responding to similar requests.

In 2007, Labor made an election commitment to reform the freedom of information legislation to promote pro-disclosure culture. Just 18 months and a change of government later, that culture has all but been destroyed by the Liberal-National Party government. Never before—not in the history of this Federation, I dare say—have we had a more obstinate and arrogant government. In question time after question time and press conference after press conference, the government refuses to answer questions. They turn every matter into a matter of national security, and of course they do not answer questions on national security, which makes it pretty hard to get any information out of this government. Even matters that relate directly to a severe conflict of interest in a minister's office somehow seem to become transformed into a personal staffing matter which they do not comment on, because they then start to describe it as 'an ongoing matter'. And, of course, if they use that technique of putting the word 'operation' in front of something, we know that that is a sacrosanct area where they will never, ever give a response.

The Australian people are awake to the nonsense of the language that this government continues to use. 'Operation Secrecy' is really what they are enacting here. 'Operation Hide-the-Facts'; 'Operation Do-Not-Account-To-The-Australian-People-For-What-You-Are-Doing'—that is the operation that is underway here. 'Operation Rip-Off-The-Health-System'; 'Operation Rip-$30 billion-Out-Of-Education'—they are the operations that are underway by this government. We only have to look to the matter regarding Senator Nash and the involvement of her chief-of-staff who was formerly a lobbyist for a major food company. He apparently lobbied to have the government healthy food rating website removed. This showed a significant breach of ethics and trust. It is just one example among many of the breathtaking arrogance of this government. Its own messed up priorities rank higher than the health of Australians. That is the kind of attitude that we have seen on display. The minister failed to answer questions in this place. She failed to answer questions at the press conference and then used the strategy that works for a while but is really wearing out: the distractor technique—'Have a look over here. Don't notice what I'm doing.'

Australians believe in freedom. They believe in freedom of information, they believe in access to information and they will not be dudded by a government that refuses to give them what they deserve. The government can obfuscate and obviate through question time and through other media communications, but, in the end, documents and emails do not lie. That is why they are fighting so hard against this bill. That is why they do not want it to go through, because Australians will be able to get the evidence, get the facts and get to the sources of information much more efficiently and effectively and will be able to see what is going on. That is why this government does not support this legislation.

This amendment simply requires the government to provide a reason for the things that they do. National security or operational matters do not cut it for protecting a staffer for making a personal political decision and utilising the authority of a minister's office, and never should it. Only yesterday, we saw how far a minister will go to run from an issue of his own making. Senator Brandis, in this place at question time, when questioned about whether a government he is a senior minister of had given money directly to asylum seekers, ducked and weaved with the skill of a feather-weight boxer and blamed every other person but himself or his government for the problem. He is certainly match-fit for avoiding telling the truth, but when it comes to allowing scrutiny this government is absolutely in lockdown. When Senator Brandis ran out of people to blame, he said this was an operational matter and he closed up the box again. He said that it is a no-go zone; the Australian people cannot know. This culture cannot continue. The government cannot get away with hiding from the Australian people and keeping them scared and anxious about a future that is filled with fear, with the government's rhetoric every day.

We live in an information era and people deserve access to the information of government. Labor believes further reform is needed to meet the current and future challenges of freedom of information legislation. That is why this bill will, if it is passed, ensure transparency and accountability is included within the framework of government decisions concerning freedom of information requests. It will allow the public to view the requests that have been made and the reasons why documents were or were not released. It will allow applicants seeking similar documents to build upon previous requests and it will reduce the duplication of requests. These are not unreasonable things for the Australian people in this information age to be able to be confident of. Nonetheless, those opposite disagree. It is vital for the government's survival that Australians have less information about what the government are doing, and that is why they will lock it down and oppose this.

I commend Senator Ludwig for his ongoing commitment over very many years—most notably during his time as Special Minister of State—to open and transparent government. I also commend him on advancing this bill. I close by commending the bill to the Senate.