Who are the most secretive agencies in in Australia?
While all governments purport to be open and accountable, the true measure is the strength of their Freedom of Information legislation.
Information is power but many governments try to render people powerless by limiting accessibility, namely the Victorian and Commonwealth governments.
These two jurisdictions have the oldest Freedom of Information legislation in the nation – dating back to 1982 – and that resistance to changing the culture from secretive to open and accountable is generated, at least partly, by fear.
Australian National University Professor Richard Mulgan said it best in a speech at this year’s Right to Information Day in Queensland: “ Some of these reasons can be seen to be self-serving, aimed at protecting the power and privileges of government, with little basis in wider public values. But other reasons have more substance and can be justified, at least in part, in terms of the public interest.”
And that’s why every jurisdiction needs an independent umpire to be able to weigh up the public interest factors and unfortunately to the public’s detriment, Victoria and the Commonwealth are missing that. Victoria has an acting FOI Commissioner who is virtually powerless and Australia has an Office of the Information Commissioner who has been stripped of its funding.
Both governments have been successful in their plight to preserve secrecy by making their Information/FOI Commissioners ineffective.
Recently I was contacted about a young 17 year-old girl who has been a ward of the state of Victoria since she was 5 months old. After being encouraged by another former ward – but from the state of NSW – to empower herself by learning more about her past, she applied for her case file under Information Privacy, only to receive a heavily redacted copy.
This was in contrast to the very open case file received by her NSW counterpart. Needless to say, the young girl is devastated, teetering on suicidal. I wanted to be able to comfort her by telling her there was a relatively easy fix but that simply isn’t the case Victoria.
I did notify both Premier Daniel Andrews on social media and the Office of the FOI Commissioner about how devastating their model of secrecy can be for ordinary Victorians who have a right to know the secrets of their past. I heard nothing back from the Premier. To his credit, acting FOI Commissioner Michael Ison did contact me, not that he could provide any reassurance.
I sent questions to Mr Andrews about his promises to change the system for the better. Most of my questions were ignored, and responses were by way of recycled platitudes of providing a “strong and robust system of scrutiny” over FOI and promising to introduce of a Public Access Counsellor in the first half of next year to replace the FOI Commissioner.
That sounds like a demotion to me and isn’t addressing any of the issues that make Victoria the most secret state in the nation.
But it’s not just the laws that often hinder information access. Some agencies’ FOI officers take it upon themselves to make it as difficult as possible for applicants to access information that is in the public interest.
I’ve undertaken more than 1000 applications under Freedom of Information laws across the nation in the past two years. Initially I thought South Australia was the worst state to deal with because they had no regard for complying with legislated timeframes, but it’s become increasingly clear that Victoria is much worse.
Most of Victoria’s agencies take it upon themselves to intimidate and frustrate applicants as is expertly portrayed in an episode of the latest series of Utopia – a satirical program set in the office of a typical government department.
First step – tell the applicant that processing their application would be “an unreasonable diversion of resources”.
It’s important that as agencies put up barriers to avoid providing information, that applicants look at that part of the legislation because there is always more to it. For example, most legislation has a clause that if agencies cite an unreasonable diversion of resources, they are then obligated to assist the applicant with information to allow them to devise a scope that can be processed. Most neglect to mention this.
Something else that is more often the case than not is the more hostile people are, the more they have to hide. Some agencies make no effort to hide their distaste for relinquishing any information that should be made publicly available.
While Victorian agencies on the whole are the most difficult, the actual worst of the worst are not in Victoria, but Western Australia. Its Department of Corrective Services has such a disdain for Freedom of Information that they even ignore basic requests like the applicants right to choose their preferred method of communication.
For example, when I asked that they email me rather than send letters which are inefficient and unreliable, they refused. Not because they weren’t able to, or it would prove more difficult, just because they couldn’t find anywhere in the legislation that said they were obligated to do this.
Eventually I had to get the state’s FOI Commissioner to intervene – thank goodness they have an effective one – and DCS begrudgingly obliged. Most agencies thankfully practice common courtesy and don’t go to such lengths to be as unhelpful as possible.
Similar tactics have been used by Western Australia’s Public Transport Authority which clearly resents the provision of any CCTV footage and even when it is forced to hand some over, it goes to great lengths to avoid providing any of use. Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice and Regulation and Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources are often difficult and take advantage of the absence of an effective external review system.
Councils are also notoriously bad, but those used to dealing with FOI applications become more relaxed and open when they realise most releases don’t result in a negative story particularly if they’re proactive in their response.
While some applications remain a struggle, Brisbane City Council and City of Sydney councils are two of the better ones although that wasn’t always the case for the former.
Various police departments across the nation are not usually particularly helpful but some, such as Queensland Police Service, have improved significantly although it can depend on which FOI officer processes your request. Part of that is probably due to the vast quantity they receive. I understand police departments receive more applications than any other agency in their respective states. That said, they should be better resourced and receive much better training.
Professor Mulgan asked some pertinent questions about this issue on Right to Information Day.
He asked whether public servants had a commitment to transparency and open government and whether they were taught to insist matters be disclosed into the public realm when there was no good reason to suppress them.
“Do they challenge their leaders’ secrecy or public duplicity in the same way they might challenge a breach of internal procedure?” he asked.
“The probable answer is that, in many cases, they do not.”
He concluded by saying that until public service culture “genuinely” embraced transparency as a core ethical value, the possibilities of open government would remain unfulfilled.
A handful of public servants across the nation do embrace this philosophy, but they are a minority. In the end, regardless of what legislation they administer, it’s the senior public servants and ministers who dictate the level of openness and accountability. And in the absence of any other effective tool, Freedom of Information is one of the best ways to measure their level of commitment to democracy and the public’s right to know and ability to scrutinise the way they are governed.
Most secretive agencies
Department of Corrective Services (WA)
Public Transport Authority (WA)
Australian Federal Police
Department of Health and Human Services (VIC)
Department of Justice and Regulation (VIC)
Department of Immigration and Border Protection (FED)
Department of Health (FED)
Most open and transparent
Sydney Trains (NSW)
Department of Transport and Main Roads (QLD)
Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (QLD)
Zoos Victoria
City of Sydney (NSW)
City of Perth (WA)
