Page 1549 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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MS HUNTER: Thank you. The major change, of course, came with the removal of conclusive certificates and then the substantial reconsideration and reworking of the FOI scheme, most notably by the Queensland and commonwealth governments. The key recommendation of the committee is that we adopt a similar model premised on openness and disclosure and subject to a single public interest test that balances whether there is a greater public interest in disclosure or confidentiality. Mrs Dunne referred to the push model.
Exemptions should not be based on documents being part of a class, but rather on the merits of the particular case and the substance of the issue at hand. This is, of course, the key point addressed in the report, but there are other very important and complementary measures that have also been considered by the committee and recommended as positive changes for the ACT. These include creating disclosure logs so everyone can easily access information that has been released so that there is a public record of what has and has not been disclosed and the reasons for that.
The report also recommends the free and accessible, proactive disclosure of government information that should be in the public domain so that people do not have to make information requests, but rather can freely and easily access the information on the internet. Reference should, of course, be made here to the Greens’ motion, Ms Le Couteur’s motion, on Gov 2.0 and the free availability of government information passed by this Assembly on Wednesday—that is, yesterday.
FOI will always be contentious and it is probably fair to say that the government will always want to be more secretive and those not in the government will want them to be more open. Certainly the submissions received by the committee and available on the committee’s website favoured increased openness, whilst the government’s submission was less disposed to this. I think the balance that the committee has adopted is a good way forward for the ACT. It will improve community access to government information and, therefore, the quality of government here in the territory.
The Greens are committed to open government and the increased participation of citizens in our democracy. Improvements to the FOI scheme are a key part of this and the Greens are very pleased that the Assembly now has the benefit of this report which consolidates much of the extensive range of material that is available on FOI. This report is the beginning of the next phase in regard to freedom of information for the ACT. There is a lot of work that now needs to be done to implement the changes and, of course, we are also hoping for a favourable government response. The Greens very much look forward to this debate continuing in this Assembly.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (12.10): In closing, I thank Ms Hunter for her comments. I warmly recommend to the government a speedy response to this inquiry. I think that there are many groups in the ACT who are anticipating that we can be part of the reforms in relation to FOI, and the access to information generally, which was reflected in Ms Le Couteur’s motion yesterday.
In conclusion, I want to pay tribute to the hardworking staff of the Assembly library and the committee secretariat for their work on this rather lengthy report. I also pay
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