New Zealand freedom of information (FoI) model urged for South Australia
A long-serving member of South Australia's Opposition is keen for New Zealand's freedom of information (FoI) laws to be used as a model for changes locally.
State Attorney-General John Rau said the SA laws had no right of veto as such, but both the State Opposition and a former ombudsman said the current laws gave ministers powerful opportunity to block FoI requests.
Liberal Mitch Williams, the parliamentary secretary to Opposition Leader Steven Marshall, wants the Liberals to offer South Australians a NZ-inspired radical FoI alternative at the next election.
Mr Williams said a strong culture had developed in South Australia of concealing as much information from the public as possible.
"Our legislation presupposes that certain documents ... should be exempt, irrespective of what they have in them," he said.
"The ministers who try to hide what they're doing are the ones who always seem to be in trouble."
Liberals say NZ model favours release over suppression
Mr Williams said the New Zealand laws were a stark contrast to those in SA.
"Their legislation presupposes that all information should be available to the public," he said.
"Interestingly, they talk about information, they don't talk about documents, so you might have a document that one small piece of information in it for good reason shouldn't be released, so the document will be released without that piece of information."
He said in SA an entire document would become exempt from release in the same circumstance.
Mr Williams is yet to win over his Liberal colleagues on the idea of taking FoI reform to the next election as a policy, but said he believed his leader Mr Marshall was "enthusiastic" about a number of areas for reform.
The South Australian Government's focus at present is on surveillance legislation.
Attorney-General John Rau said proposed changes would make it a criminal offence to use any video or audio obtained by covert means unless a court ruled the material was in the public interest.
Mr Rau said he was pushing to have that legislation through the Parliament before the end of the year.
