Page 2744 - Week 08 - Thursday, 11 August 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
As Mr Hanson discussed in his comments, on a number of occasions I have looked at creating a push model within the structure of the current Freedom of Information Act 1989. I was wedded to keeping that structure because we are the ACT, we work in close proximity to the federal government in many ways and it seemed ideal to keep a structure that was common across the federal jurisdiction and the ACT jurisdiction. I thought that there would be merit in keeping that structure but it has become increasingly obvious to me over the years that the old structure, which is in effect 1980s legislation from the commonwealth, copied by us in 1989, is not a structure amenable to a push model of access to information. I think it was a failing on my part not to recognise this earlier and it is a persistent failure on the part of the government not to recognise this.
I will speak at length in the detail stage about the Liberal Party’s position on many of the government amendments. The government has proposed 72 amendments. Many of them are designed to dismantle the push model, remove the role of the Ombudsman as the first reviewer and take away the empowering structure of the information officer, which I think is absolutely pivotal to this legislation. We will not be supporting these amendments.
The government does, however, have a tranche of amendments which I believe should be supported, some of which were threshold questions for us to support the legislation. My party room was not prepared to support this legislation without the inclusion of protections for legal professional privilege and for security and policing matters, as well as improved protections for personal information and law enforcement. In addition, the government has amendments that relate to cabinet information and health records. We will be supporting those for the most part.
In relation to the government’s amendment on cabinet information, I think it is a bit clunky. We have struggled with getting it absolutely right. In the face of not being able to get it absolutely right, I have agreed with a suggestion put to me that we should take the cabinet information definition in the current Freedom of Information Act 1989 and put it into this. That is a better approach than the government’s slightly clunky approach in this case.
I am very cognisant of the fact that this has been done in a rush. Everybody should share some blame for that. This bill was introduced in May this year and I know that Mr Rattenbury had considerable consultation before then. I think that we in the Liberal Party probably were not agile enough in addressing some of the issues earlier in the piece. If Mr Rattenbury was intending to try to have it passed this term, perhaps he should have brought it to us a little earlier than in the last two to three weeks.
Given that background, it is certain that this legislation will have to be reviewed very closely by the drafters. I suspect that when you make big changes like this in a less than coordinated fashion, you will make mistakes. We will make mistakes here today. As Mr Hanson has said, if we are in government before this legislation commences it will be thoroughly reviewed to ensure that it does the job that we set out here today. We make it very clear today that what we are doing is creating a push model for access for information. We will not resile from that. No matter who is in government, we will be quite vigilant to ensure that any amendments that need to be brought back do not undermine the basic principle of this legislation.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video