Finally! Another media outlet has jumped in to back The Australian’s freedom of information editor Michael McKinnon in his battles with bureaucrats over access to vital documents explaining the decision making process behind federal government policies.



The “Freedom of Information Act may as well be scrapped,” The Canberra Times has written in a blistering editorial:

Proper transparency and accountability in government has
hardly been enhanced by the approach of the federal treasurer, Peter
Costello, to Freedom of Information requests, even if his obdurate
approach was upheld on Tuesday by a majority decision in a full bench
of the Federal Court.

Even as alarming, however, is the fact that the decision has, wittingly
or unwittingly, turned disclosure of documents under FOI into a purely
discretionary process, apparently beyond the scope of judicial review.
The majority judges achieved this by confusing a public interest – of
which there are many – with the public interest, the synthesis of all
of them.

If this is to be the case, the FOI Act might as well be scrapped altogether, and the sooner the better…

The Canberra Times gives us a very neat history lesson:

Oddly,
perhaps, one who might welcome amendment rather than abolition could be
the prime minister, John Howard, whose loss of an FOI case, while an
Opposition backbencher in 1985, started the rot. Mr Howard, then a
former treasurer, sought FOI access to some Treasury briefing papers
prepared for his successor, and, on being refused, appealed with a very
cogent case. The Treasury responded with a class claim of where the
public interest lay which, if true, made nonsense of Parliament’s
adoption of the FOI Act or of its application to matters of high
policy. To considerable amazement, a Federal Court judge, sitting as
Administrative Appeals Tribunal President, upheld the claim.

And TheTimes has some harsh words for the current treasurer and man
who would be in charge of the lot, Peter Costello:

Whenever the treasurer wants to avoid disclosure, he can sign a ‘conclusive
certificate’ saying that disclosure is against the public interest. The
right of appeal is limited. The tribunal, or a court on appeal, cannot
remove the certificate; it can decide only that in its opinion, it is
unreasonable and recommend its lifting. The treasurer can reject this
in a statement tabled in Parliament – but Parliament, in adopting the
FOI Act, has never fulfilled its own function of then debating the
matter.

In Tuesday’s case, however, it never got that far…

What were the documents being sought, in this case by The Australian
newspaper? Technical documents showing how much the government is
slugging the taxpayer because of bracket creep, and explaining
something which is well known, if not in detail, that there was
extensive rorting of the First Home Owners Scheme.

It is understandable that Mr Costello does not want the public to know about either, since both reflect on his stewardship.

It is unconscionable that his desire to avoid embarrassment is what determines the public interest.

A great effort from the Times’s Jack Waterford – but a pity we’re
only reading about it now that the battle is lost. This issue affects
all the media – as well as us. Where have they been?