Joe Bullock (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Many of the issues that come before this place attract great public interest and comment. Newspaper articles are published by the dozen, hours of radio are filled, and senators and our colleagues in the other place are deluged with phone calls, emails and letters from constituents. Freedom of information legislation is not typically one of those issues. The manner in which freedom of information applications are submitted, processed, responded to and dealt with by governments is not a subject that normally gets the blood racing. It is just not front-page news. It can seem legalistic, arcane, complicated and dull. I doubt very much that any of the speeches on the Freedom of Information Amendment (Requests and Reasons) Bill 2015 will go on to form the stuff of parliamentary anecdotes in the years to come, even though, sadly, Senator Reynolds believes that it has a catchy title.

All of this is unfortunate, because freedom of information and transparency in government are vital to a thriving democracy. Whether they realise it or not, preventing the government of the day from acting in secrecy is one of the bulwarks that people have against creeping totalitarianism, corruption and inefficient administration. It was that creeping totalitarianism to which Senator McGrath referred in his adjournment speech on Monday night, celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. In doing so he drew a long bow—a weapon which would provide the English with a decisive military advantage in the centuries to follow—and suggested that it was some imagined future Labor government which threatened the freedoms of generations of Australians to come. His wild imaginings fell well wide of the mark. The threat to our future lies not with a government dedicated to serving the interests of working people but with a government which loves secrecy, disdains transparency and treats with contempt not only the legitimate questioning of Her Majesty's opposition but also the requests of the people for details as to the working and reasoning of their government. This threat lies not in the future; this threat exists here and now under this government. Unless they accept the sensible amendments proposed by Senator Ludwig, it is they, not Labor, who threaten to be the King Johns of tomorrow.

Without freedom of information, the people cannot make a true decision at the ballot box, nor can they be accurately said to be genuine participants in the democracy. Incompetent or malicious governments the world over benefit from secrecy. Conversely, to borrow a cliche, sunlight is the best disinfectant for such things. This bill seeks to increase the sunlight and improve the government, whichever party is in power.

Before I turn to the specifics of the bill, I might speak in praise of Senator Ludwig's absolute commitment to transparency in government. His office has organised what must be hundreds of 'freedom of information' requests of the government, as well as assisting countless other offices to do the same. There would hardly be an area of administration untouched by his efforts. In seeking out the facts in his tireless way, he has done the parliament and his country a great service and I for one am thankful for it.

In doing so, Senator Ludwig is acting consistent with a Labor tradition stretching back over 40 years. It is Labor which has always championed openness in government. From the freedom of information legislation first brought forward under Gough Whitlam to the more recent and thoughtful contributions of Senator Faulkner, it is Labor which has always striven to take the Australian people into its confidence and expose to them, openly, how the government works on their behalf providing thereby a contrast between the transparency of Labor and the secrecy of the coalition.

In furtherance of government transparency Senator Ludwig has proposed this bill, amending the Freedom of Information Act in a number of small but significant ways. The bill ensures that information will be made directly available to the public from an agency's or minister's website, rather than mere directions to where it is available. It requires successful applications to be accompanied by the relevant minister or agency publishing the application and the reasons for its success. It requires edited documents to be accompanied by a written explanation for the edits. It requires unsuccessful applications to be followed by the publication of any findings of material fact involved in that decision. And it requires the provision of all of this to the public, free of charge. It seeks to limit the unjustified editing which can be used as a shield by governments to deny members of the public access to the information which they might genuinely and legitimately seek. The transparency which the bill introduces will improve efficiency by reducing the likelihood of repeated requests for the same information. And, while the bill promotes openness, it does not compromise the privacy of individuals but rather provides additional protections for those seeking to access their personal information.

As I said at the outset, much of this may seem at first glance to be arcane. But the fact remains that transparency is crucial. We have seen the current government, very recently, fail to answer straight questions and instead hide behind phrases like 'operational matters'. We have seen antics like those of the agriculture minister—the ham-fisted attempts of his office to change the details of one of his answers in the House of Representatives. The protracted attempts to avoid transparency in the handling of subsequent FOI requests led to a breakdown in the relationship between the minister and his head of department and to the controversial dismissal of the department head—a talented and respected public servant. We have seen this Liberal government attempt to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which oversees freedom of information and privacy law—and, when they failed in their bid to abolish that office through the parliament, they simply defunded it. Even in the emerging pattern of secretive and opaque behaviour that is coming to characterise this government, the attack on the Information Commissioner stands out as an alarming development and one that deserves greater attention. On 20 May The Canberra Times reported:

… three former Supreme Court judges questioned the constitutionality of the decision, saying the government had bypassed Parliament and "achieved the same result by the power of the purse".

Those three former Victorian Supreme Court justices—Tim Smith, David Harper and Stephen Charles—wrote in The Age newspaper on 26 May:

… the new Abbott government began a return journey to a dismal past. In the eyes of the government, FOI had advanced too far. It therefore set out to abolish the office's FOI roles and, effectively, to return to the old, deeply flawed FOI system …

The government's intentions became clear in May last year. The 2014-15 budget provided funding for the office only until December 31, 2014. Consistently with this, the government also introduced a bill to abolish the office and, with it, the enlightened Faulkner FOI regime. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives in late October 2014. It was introduced into the Senate … There it has languished, apparently abandoned by a government content to ignore its fundamental responsibility to execute the law.

I am quoting from these judges here:

Having failed to pass the legislative amendments that would have effected its purpose, the government has achieved the same result by the power of the purse. It has ignored the law, but won a tactical victory. Expedience has again trumped principle.

The result is deeply disturbing. Greater secrecy has been reintroduced. Government is now less transparent and accountable. More particularly, its fiduciary duty to us as our public trustee has been breached. That duty is to place the public interest first.

This is all a quotation from the article by the three former justices, who conclude by asking:

Where now is the election commitment to increased transparency and accountability?

Where, indeed? One is forced to wonder what sort of government would go to such lengths to avoid scrutiny of itself. One does not have to wonder what the results of a lack of scrutiny would be: worse government for the people of Australia and less they can do about it.

Just this morning, further evidence came into my hands of the opacity of this government in dealing with an important issue in my state of Western Australia. In that regard, my House of Representatives colleague, Alannah MacTiernan released a statement that I would like to share:

The Abbott and Barnett Governments are pulling out all the stops in a bid to block the truth coming out about the flawed $1.6 billion Perth Freight Link project.

This week the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development refused to release any documents not already in the public domain relating to the Perth Freight Link.

Traffic counts, traffic projections and cost estimates underpinning the project were considered too sensitive to release — it was claimed releasing them would damage Commonwealth-State relations.

The Department and Main Roads WA also argued—

Listen to this—

that if a document is not in the public domain, it is "inherently confidential" and can be exempted from the FOI process.

Alannah MacTiernan says:

I have been attempting to get hold of these documents for almost a year.

The Department has also demanded more than $2500 in charges for the search, claiming the documents were wanted for personal interest, not the public interest. That absurd decision is being challenged in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

It was ludicrous for the Department to claim it was not in the public interest to release documents relating to a highly contentious and vastly expensive infrastructure project.

How can having the traffic counts and traffic projections on this colossal project undermine the relationship between the Commonwealth and WA?

The truth is that this project was ill-conceived and ill-researched, and the Abbott and Barnett Governments will do whatever it takes to stop the truth from coming out.

That is the approach of this government to freedom of information, to maintain that if information is not out there already then, clearly, it must be inherently confidential and it is nobody else's business! That is not freedom of information; that is governing by secrecy. Politicians cannot be allowed to weaken the system that ensures their behaviour is accountable to voters. If they are, we will have appointed the poachers to be gamekeepers.

So 'freedom of information' law is anything but trivial. Ensuring that governments cannot operate in secrecy is vital. Rather than dismantling those procedures and institutions that protect democracy, this parliament should be strengthening and protecting them. And this bill does exactly that.

I hope that senators opposite, good men and women, reverse the trend of this government to close down transparency and instead support this bill. It might not repair all the damage that has been done in recent times to freedom of information, but it is a start. It is important and they should vote for it, even though it is not front page news. It is the right thing to do.