Freedom of Information (Offences) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 26 March 2015).)

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (11:15): I take great pleasure in rising to support my colleague the member for Morialta for bringing this matter to the house. Basically, this bill would amend the principal act to make it an offence for anyone to exert undue influence on a freedom of information officer while they were making a judgement as to whether information, data, papers, etc., held by government should be released under our freedom of information law.

I fully support this. There are significant problems with the freedom of information law in this state; indeed, I think it is a misnomer to even call it a freedom of information law. It is certainly a law which imposes secrecy, and it does more to prevent information from escaping the clutches of the government of the day than anything else. The particular matter that the member for Morialta wishes to address with this bill is quite significant; that is, we believe freedom of information officers are regularly influenced by direction—perhaps not directly from ministers but certainly from ministers' offices—to do whatever they can to withhold information which should be in the public realm.

Good government is about making good decisions, and when you can secrete the information on which you base your decision-making from the public, from the opposition, from the stakeholders, when you can secrete information even loosely related to those decisions, it is impossible for us to be confident that we have any decent level of accountability within the deliverance of governance in this state. That is the situation we find here in South Australia.

I have been through the process under the existing freedom of information law, a few years ago I recall, and it was with regard to the development of the desal plant. After all these years we are quite regularly reading reports, some of which emanate from within the South Australian government and some from within SA Water, which highlight what I was trying to highlight many years ago as the shadow minister, that that was an absolutely bungled decision. I am specifically referring to the decision to double the size of the desal plant.

It was a dumb decision, and I guarantee it was made on the basis of dumb information that was provided to the cabinet of the day. However, we could not access—the community could not access, the opposition could not access, no-one could access—the information on which those decisions were made until years later, until after the dumb decisions had been made and all the money had been spent and wasted. It has happened time and time again.

With regard to that, I recall one particular matter on which I was trying to seek information. I appealed it to the Ombudsman and eventually got the relevant information, but it was about 18 months after I had made my initial request; far too long after the events to do anything about them. Time had passed and more dumb decisions had been taken and more South Australians had been hurt, and they continue to be hurt by that dumb decision. I suspect this happens on a very regular basis.

The particular ill that the member for Morialta wants to cure here is to remove the ability for ministers and ministerial staffers to have undue influence on FOI officers by influencing them to withhold information. I believe that in an ideal world ministerial officers would only be aware of an FOI request once the decision had been made, and I think it is fair and reasonable that a minister (through his or her office) should become aware that a particular set of information had indeed been released.

I do not think that a ministerial officer (or office) needs to be flagged that an FOI request has come in. In fact, I think that should be an offence; I see no necessity for the bureaucracy to inform the minister that there was an FOI request. I can see no necessity for that. But I certainly accept that if information is released it is fair and reasonable that the minister for that particular area of government be made aware. They could be apprised of the relevant information in the interests of that matter and brought up to speed on it in case they need to answer questions put by the media or, indeed, put in this place. That is an important part of the working of government and, obviously, its accountability.

For ministers' officers to be apprised of requests before a decision has been made is a nonsense and only encourages the sort of interference that the member for Morialta is trying to stop. That would be one simple way of doing that to make sure—

The Hon. P. Caica: The member for Hartley.

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes, the member for Hartley. I kept referring to the member for Morialta, the good Whip over here. I apologise to the member for Hartley.

The Hon. P. Caica: Apologise to both of them.

Mr WILLIAMS: I do not think that is necessary. Notwithstanding that, they are both good members, and their membership of this place makes it a better place than what it was previously.

This is a really important small step in improving our FOI law. I have talked at length on previous occasions regarding my concerns with our FOI law per se, and I sincerely hope and expect that I will do that again from time to time during the rest of this parliament.

I will leave my comments there. I fully support the measure that has been brought by the member for Hartley, and I hope that the government takes notice of this because it is important for maintaining confidence in the governance of this state, and I commend the bill to the house.

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (11:23): What is the price of freedom of information? I can tell you: it is $181,829.30. I rise to support this bill moved by the member for Hartley because of that exact figure: $181,829.30 was the sum total of seven FOIs I submitted in 2009, 2010 and 2011 in relation to the development of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. I was asking for the business case and for email trails on various doctors' contracts, those sorts of things—but no. The cost involving the business case amounted to $39,750; there was another one for Central Northern Adelaide Health Services, $39,750; there was one on SA Health, Media and Communications unit—and that was a cheap one—$3,034.30; and there was another one I had in there as well for Aboriginal health services, $4,297. That is the price of freedom of information.

It is a shame, but I was warned recently by one of my contacts in the government that I should be very, very wary of the information I get back from the office of the Minister for Emergency Services with my FOIs that are going in there—if for no other reason than it is a shame that, if you put in an FOI on a relatively straightforward topic, you get back not one, not two, not three, not four, not five but six pages of redacted information—on several of those pages there are a couple of lines that have been left in; the rest of it is completely blanked out.

The cost of the freedom of information there was that there was no information. What is going to be the cost of that information being kept secret? We just do not know what is there. I am afraid that I do not trust this government to release the information. I do not trust the interference we are seeing now from ministers and their departments in the freedom of information process.

The former governor of South Australia, Kevin Scarce, absolutely stunned me when I was over at Government House for a reception for Youth Parliament. I asked him about this and asked whether I could use it, and he said, 'I said it, so you can use it.' He said when addressing Youth Parliament, 'There are three things wrong with this government: there is no ministerial accountability, the Executive ignores the parliament, and the Public Service has been highly politicised.' Obviously, this government has the highest respect, as we all should, for former governor Kevin Scarce, and for him to say that, as I said, I was stunned by that.

When we have to continually ask for reviews of the freedom of information process, when we have to continually sit in the Ombudsman's office, as I have done on a number of occasions, with people I am trying to seek information from—and their team of lawyers in one case–what is going on in this state? What is the state of the state?

Surely, the democratic process should be about our being able to access information in an open and transparent manner. Obviously, there is commercial-in-confidence material, but why doesn't the government offer members of the opposition confidential briefings on that if they have concerns about it? I must give the Minister for Health his due: we did have that on one occasion recently, where I put in an FOI about a particular organisation in the health department where there were some concerns about the fact that, if the information was released without some background, it could be interpreted in a way that could have caused some personal danger to some people. So, I was more than happy to have a confidential briefing, and I will not betray that confidence because I accept the responsibility as a member of parliament to understand the process and the procedures and the importance of maintaining that confidence.

The need to make sure that the information that is out there that should and could be on the public record is indeed on the public record is what this is about, but we are seeing this time after time after time. I hope that when the government is in opposition—and it will be—those who are here now and listening to this now remember what I am saying—that when you are battling this process every day, like we have to, you remember what you did because you reap what you sow. It is very important that you are open and honest, have the courage of your convictions—have the courage, the decency, the openness.

I would name certain ministers in this place who I can talk to. I do have their mobile phone numbers, and I can have an open and honest conversation with them. I am heartened by their integrity, their professionalism and their ability to stay on top of their portfolios to the point where they can have those discussions with me. I am humbled by the immense trust they have in me in their giving me the information they do, knowing that I am not going to betray that confidence because I am not seeking to bring them down or trick them or be smart about it. I just want to know for my constituents' sake and for the state's sake. That is all. We want to make sure that things are going well. If you have something to hide, that is a shame. If you have nothing to hide, do not hide it.

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (11:29): This bill really puts me in mind of the fantastic work we were hoping to see from one Mr John McTernan when he came as a Thinker in Residence to South Australia: he was going to look at open data, making data more visible. I note John McTernan's recent success in destroying the Scottish Labour Party in a similar way to the way that he destroyed the Australian Labor Party at a federal level, but I fear I may slightly digress. At that point, I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.