Page 653 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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This is counter to the spirit of the objects of the legislation. This is why the Canberra Liberals have been fighting for a very long time for FOI reform. This is why today is a very great day for the people of the ACT, because this is the opening up, the beginning of the process of reforming FOI. It is not the end; there is a long way to go.
This is now a very old piece of legislation. It was passed for the ACT in 1989. I was an FOI officer in the commonwealth in 1984. After 25 years or so, it is time for comprehensive review of the legislation, both in the commonwealth and in the states and territories. I concur with the sentiments of Mr Rattenbury when he says that the ACT should be at the forefront, leading that reform.
It is interesting that Mr Corbell’s reform package does not go as far as the reform package proposed by the commonwealth. Mr Corbell’s reform package is a Clayton’s reform package.
The opposition’s bill will finally, once and for all, remove conclusive certificates in three of the four categories where conclusive certificates already exist. This is the same initiative initiated by Senator Faulkner in the commonwealth, except that Senator Faulkner’s provisions go further. Senator Faulkner’s provisions will also do away with conclusive certificates on national security documents.
When I introduced this bill and when I introduced its forerunner in 2007, I said that, while I was favourably disposed to that radical step, I thought it was a step that should not be taken without consultation with the commonwealth and other states and territories. It is interesting to see that the commonwealth is prepared to sanction and contemplate such a move whereas Mr Corbell is not. Mr Corbell is not prepared to sanction such a move in relation to commonwealth-state relations.
Conclusive certificates are an easy way out for governments, ministers and bureaucrats. It allows them to make arbitrary decisions and cover them up from public access. It allows ministers and bureaucrats to transact their business in cellars in the dark. They are a means by which government, ministers and bureaucrats can avoid being accountable to the community. The prime example of that is the shield of conclusive certificates that this Labor government issued to deny public access to its functional review of 2006. Clearly, public release of the functional review would have been highly embarrassing for the government, a government which simply did not have the guts to face up to the public scrutiny of actions that closed schools, libraries and shopfronts, that gutted government services and agencies, that reached deeply into the pockets of the people of Canberra and that denied the people of Canberra any involvement in determining their own destiny.
Conclusive certificates are a blot on our statute books; this opposition bill expunges most of that blot. Importantly, the opposition bill is simple. It does not carry the complications or the shortcomings of the government’s bill. The government’s bill is complicated. It is the animal farm bill. It says that all government documents are public, but some are less public than others. As I have said before, it creates a whole new class of documents that would be exempt from consideration for public release. The government’s bill has a number of shortcomings. It does not eliminate as many classes of conclusive certificates as does the opposition bill, because, as I have said
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