Labor wins fight for Buswell file
The Information Commissioner has ruled that a highly sensitive Department of the Premier and Cabinet report into how senior public servants dealt with the fallout of Troy Buswell's driving affair should be released to the Opposition.
Opposition Leader Mark McGowan has waged a 10-month battle to get access under Freedom of Information laws to DPC director-general Peter Conran's report into how senior public servants dealt with the fallout from the events of February last year, when Mr Buswell crashed his ministerial Holden Caprice into four cars, a Telstra pole and his front gate after drinking for hours at a Kings Park wedding.
In April, Premier Colin Barnett said the report had cleared any senior staff of misconduct or policy breaches.
Mr Conran has so far refused to release the report and associated documents, including a chronology of events and emails, arguing that to do so would not be in the public interest.
After an initial refusal in May, Mr McGowan sought the external review of Information Commissioner Sven Bluemmel in July, arguing there was a conflict of interests in Mr Conran being the investigator and author of the report as well as the decision-maker on the FOI application.
Mr McGowan claimed the conduct of Mr Conran's investigation "goes to the heart of government accountability to the WA public", while agreeing that information concerning the health and wellbeing of government officers should be withheld.
DPC submitted that the relevant public interest in the case was not the information revealed by the inquiry but whether Mr Conran's investigation had been done "robustly with integrity".
"There is no public interest in the public having access to the content of the material which was revealed in the course of the inquiry," DPC said. "As a member of an opposing political party, the complainant's (Mr McGowan's) interest is in obtaining an advantage for the purpose of his political party which is not necessarily in the wider public interest."
DPC also submitted that senior public servants had co-operated with his investigation voluntarily on the basis that their evidence would be treated confidentially.
Revealing the contents via FOI would make future similar investigations of high-profile incidents more difficult.
But Mr Bluemmel rejected the arguments, saying "there are very strong public interest factors in favour of disclosure".
The Government has 21 days to decide whether to appeal against the ruling to the Supreme Court, though last year in Parliament Mr Barnett said he would "leave it up to the Information Commissioner to make the decision".
Yesterday, a DPC spokesman said: "We are currently considering our options in this matter."
Mr McGowan said the Government should release the documents "as directed by the Commissioner" and criticised it for fighting his application.
"It does show a culture of secrecy in trying to hide information to the public that might be embarrassing to the Government," he said.
'There is no public interest in the public having access to the content of the material.'" Department of the Premier and Cabinet
