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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-10-31 Daily Xml
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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (15:42): If transparency and accountability were a legitimate and valiant aspiration of this government, then surely the events of the last few weeks would confirm that that has evaporated. I wish to bring to the attention of the house today the judgement of Her Honour Judge Cole of the District Court who, on 27 September this year, dismissed the appeal of the Department of Planning and Local Government against me in their attempt to seek a determination of the Ombudsman be overturned. In her judgement, Her Honour dismissed the department's appeal and, hence, the Ombudsman's determination remains intact in full.

Essentially this related to an application that I made, now over two years ago, on 12 May 2010 to the department of planning and local government, as it was then known, under the Freedom of Information Act, in which I sought, and I quote:

The submissions listed as 'unavailable for public inspection at the request of the submitter' on the list of submissions received by the State Government in regard to the Draft 30-Year Plan for Greater Adelaide.

On 9 June that year, that is, a month later, Ms Amanda Nicholls, the accredited freedom of information officer, determined to grant partial access, releasing 32 documents, but determined that 89 documents in full and 10 documents in part were to be denied.

I sought an internal review on 10 June and Mr Ian Nightingale, the then chief executive officer, made a further determination supporting the rejection. There was then an application for external review of Mr Nightingale's determination on 11 July 2010, in which I asserted that the 30-Year Plan for Greater Adelaide is a document prepared to guide development and public policy for the next 30 years. A public call for submissions was made and therefore it could be assumed all documentation surrounding the formulation of the plan is in the public interest and, secondly, that it would appear extremely unlikely that a person making a submission of this nature would want their details withheld for fear of being identified by a former spouse in relation to domestic abuse. If a person was in that situation, it would be far more likely they would be making an anonymous submission.

That, incidentally, was one of the pathetic excuses, I have to say, that the department used, talking of not disclosing documents, that is that it might cause some domestic abuse. Then we had the extraordinary claim by Mr Nightingale that because 500 documents had already been released and that was the overwhelming majority of documents, we should think ourselves lucky that we got that and that should be considered reasonable.

For obviously valid reasons, the Ombudsman rejected the refusal of the disclosure of these documents. He provided a comprehensive determination, identifying and separating where there had been personal submissions or where there had been business submissions. Essentially all the arguments that had been presented had been dismissed, as I say, but the Ombudsman clearly identified that the disclosure of the documents on balance would be in the public interest.

That is, of course, the reason we have the Freedom of Information Act. What is concerning, and I bring it to the attention of the house, is that that determination is there and of course has been a determination since 2 March 2011. That was 18 months ago. The appeal has been in; it has been dismissed and yet over a month later, that is even something like three weeks since the date of the appeal period from which the government could appeal if they wanted to has expired, they still have not produced one single document.

My office has made inquiries in relation to when that will be available. They are still thinking about how they are going collate it. That is the last that we have. They are going to get back to us, possibly by the end of the week, to give us some update. This is a scandalous situation. It is a totally unacceptable situation. This department had a direction back in March 2011. It has exercised its right of appeal. It lost; it has not gone any further and yet still it denies the public of South Australia that legitimate documentation. It is a disgrace.

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