Information Access

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (15:31): When it comes to public confidence and trust in government the key elements are accountability and transparency. In my work over many years in the public realm, whether it is here in parliament or in the community, I have synthesised down to four key elements what I think people are looking for when it comes to what comprises public confidence in government.

First of all, people want access to information. They want to know what is happening, what is going on and what the information base is for decisions that are made. Secondly, people want to participate in decisions that are made that affect them. Thirdly, even if people do not want to participate in decisions, they want those decisions to be transparent. They want to know with confidence how they were made and that they were made on the right grounds rather than on any wrong grounds. Finally, when things go wrong, as they do, people want access to justice.

I want to focus mainly today on access to information. People often think about the Freedom of Information Act as the key tool for providing access to information, but really that is a last resort. A last resort for citizens to find information is to have to use the complex and time-wasting procedures set out in the Freedom of Information Act. What most people expect is that information we have a right to see will be routinely published—that you will be able to go to a website and find the information you want. You should not have to go through FOI.

I had an example recently where a government agency, a planning body, put a lot of information on its website for six days, and then when the six days was up they pulled the information from the website and replaced it with a note saying, effectively, 'You've missed the window. If you now want these documents, please apply through freedom of information.' What a ridiculous way for a government agency to behave. Have they not heard of things called archives? They could just say, 'This is no longer current. You will find it here in the archives.' It was ridiculous, I think, that a parliamentary committee had to write to the department saying, 'Can we please have those documents that used to be publicly available and that you've pulled off the website?'

When it comes to financial information there is very little transparency. Certainly, we know, here, that there are processes through the Auditor-General; there are budget papers. Those mean nothing to ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens want that information explained to them in a much simpler form.

One thing they are very keen to find out about is whether their elected representatives, their members of parliament, are squeaky clean in relation to their personal finances, so that they do not affect public decisions that are being made in parliament. When you look at the Register of Members' Interests rules, these are documents that we are all familiar with. We fill them out each year, but they do not really tell the community anything.

For example, if you have an interest in a trust, you declare it, but no-one knows what that means. They do not know whether that trust is some sort of ownership structure for a business that makes widgets or an investment company that owns buildings or shopping centres or houses or whatever—no idea. Similarly, regarding declarations in relation to shares, you might declare BHP shares, but no-one knows if you have one or one million. I think that those antiquated rules in relation to the Register of Members' Interests need to be revised.

Even just in terms of how we make decisions in a place like this, I have said to anyone who will listen that I think the Victorian parliament is doing a good job in providing access to information to its citizens. If you are on Twitter, you will find out from the Victorian parliament when every select committee meeting is being held, where it is, how you can attend and what they are talking about, and you get that in advance. That is not something the South Australian parliament has embraced. I think we should.

It may be that people are nervous that the more we open up the more people will not like what they see. That is not an excuse for not opening up; that is a reason for having better systems. I think this parliament, and we as members, need to do much more in relation to transparency. The government as well takes prime responsibility, I think, for the lack of trust in government. They need to get their act in order. We need to commit to a new era of openness and transparency.