Freedom of information: No-one supports Labor’s bill
Labor faces opposition from almost everyone on the freedom of information (FOI) bill.
cricket He understands that all parties, including the Greens, intend to oppose it. Members of this blog held a press conference this morning to explain why.
A group of 10 MPs, including independent MPs Allegra Harcama, Helen Haines, Dai Le and Zali Steggall, and Senators David Pocock, David Shoebridge and Jacqui Lambie, said in a press release that the government’s bill should be scrapped.
“When we examine the history of government failures like robodebt, it is clear that government and bureaucratic decisions need more transparency, not less,” he said in the statement.
The coalition also opposes it in principle, but those members will reserve their decision until the Senate committee finalizes its decision. Investigation into the bill, cricket he understands. The investigation is scheduled to be reported on December 3.
This means the government will struggle to pass the bill through the Senate (which holds 29 of 76 seats) unless significant changes are made.
“Labour’s FOI bill makes the broken system worse and, let’s be clear, it faces an uphill battle in the Senate because the numbers are not there,” said Shoebridge, the Greens’ justice spokesman. cricket.
“There are only two paths for Labor in the Senate, one is to make a deal with the Coalition and the other is to make a deal with the Greens. We have made clear that this bill will not pass with Greens support.”
He said the bill failed to address the extensive delays and burdensome regulations associated with the current FOI system and that the Greens would be ready to support “real reform” to fix the system.
As Catherine Williams and Gabrielle Appleby of the Center for Public Integrity wrote in an article Australian Financial Review On Tuesday, the Senate investigation into the bill received “nearly unanimous damning reviews” in the submission box, which closed last week.
“No supporters other than the government could be found,” they wrote. The Australian Public Service Commission, Australian Services and the Attorney General’s Office were the only three stakeholders to approve the bill.
Part of the purpose of the bill, according to Attorney General Michelle Rowland, is to “strike an appropriate balance between the applicant’s access rights and taxpayer resources in providing that access.” To this end, a fee will be applied to requests, a 40-hour processing limit will be introduced, and applicants will be required to identify themselves by name, among other changes.
In Senate estimates hearing On Tuesday, Celeste Moran, of the identity and information division of the Attorney General’s Department, said the government relied on a recommendation in the Senate’s 2023 report on the operation of FOI laws to justify its proposal to impose fees on requests.
But Liberal-National Senator Paul Scarr, one of the report’s authors, said he viewed the recommendation differently.
“With respect to the comment about fees and charges that you mentioned, do you accept that that comment is contained in a recommendation that says you need to reform the system in all the other ways that the recommendations suggest, and then after you’ve spent three years reforming the system to improve it, maybe you can look at whether you need to bring charges to deal with things like vexatious cases?” said Scarr.
“I have tried to make clear that the recommendation on fees and charges will form part of the future review of the FOI regime and that has not happened,” Moran responded.
The estimates hearing also heard the department had received 21 FOI requests related to the reforms and had requested extensions on all of them from the Office of the Information Commissioner (OAIC). The OAIC rejected all these applications.
“We were informed by the OAIC that they denied our request for an extension,” said Kenneth Eagle of the corporate counsel’s office. “Some of the requests came in after their deadlines. So they were already late.”
