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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Freedom of Information (Offences) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 14 May 2015.)

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (11:16): The Freedom of Information (Offences) Amendment Bill will require stricter controls to be placed on the way that freedom of information applications are treated by government offices. As a member of the opposition, it is critically important because we believe that, where possible, information must be freely available to the people of South Australia.

As I recall, the last time I was discussing this I raised the report done by Thinker in Residence John McTernan, who came to South Australia from Scotland at the request of former premier Rann to do some work on the way that data and information could be freely presented to the South Australian people. It was ironic, I remember at the time, that at the conclusion of him doing that work it took about 18 months for it to be released to the public, and his six-figure fee for being a Thinker in Residence, justified through a release of a report to the public, at the conclusion of the work that he had done.

We had a number of Thinkers in Residence, but I think that John McTernan, as I understand and have been told, held the record for taking the longest to release his report advising on the free availability of data and information—which is somewhat ironic in itself. This bill, I have no doubt, would provide perhaps an example where John McTernan's report might have been sought under freedom of information. A bill like this, if it were in place, might have seen it released a lot earlier than it was because somebody might have been able to get it under freedom of information.

Of course, Mr McTernan went on to work for former prime minister Gillard and helped to free the Australian people from the situation of her government. More recently, he went on to help the Scottish Labour Party and, in the context of providing free information to all around, I believe the Scottish Labour Party now holds one seat. That is a fine body of work created by Mr McTernan and it all comes back to freedom of information and freedom of data; therefore, I support the bill.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (11:19): I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words on this particular bill of the member for Hartley. Myself, along with many other members in this place, use freedom of information regularly to try to find out exactly what is going on around the place, whether that be in government departments, at the local government level or whatever. Indeed, in many cases it is a frustrating exercise.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before you keep going, member for Finniss, the table staff have informed me you have already spoken on this bill.

Mr PENGILLY: I don't mind going again.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. It is just one of those things; unfortunately, it is not going to be allowed to happen, so we are going to ask you to sit, which you have done, and recognise the member for Mitchell, who I believe has not spoken on the bill.

Mr WINGARD (Mitchell) (11:20): The confusion may have come around because this bill was introduced—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry, according to our very efficient table staff, you have already spoken on this bill as well.

Mr WINGARD: Was that before parliament was prorogued or after?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not think you want to get into an argument about it. If the table staff say you have spoken, you have spoken.

Mr WINGARD: No, I am genuinely asking the question.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You can come and speak to them about it. It was 26 March, so it was not that long ago, and I would not be drawing attention to the fact that you do not remember. Perhaps we could get you some Hansard on it. Anybody else?

Mr Gardner: I understand it to be the member for Morialta's fault.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh well, you can take that up between yourselves. I am looking at the member for Newland.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland) (11:22): I rise to oppose the bill, and the government opposes the bill, for a number of reasons. The member for Hartley has come in here and he has explained why he has introduced the bill. He has talked about Mr Richard Bingham's audit: 'An audit of state government departments' implementation of the Freedom of Information Act 1991 (SA)', which was released in May last year. There are a number of recommendations in that document. Recommendation 26 is apparently the one that has driven this bill.

The government has a number of concerns about it and I will talk about a couple of them in particular. Firstly, the government has not finished considering that report and is in fact in the process of formulating its response to that report. It would be better for that to happen first, in the government's view. The second thing is that the bill goes further than recommendation 26 requires, in that a prescribed officer must report the matter to the Office for Public Integrity. The commissioner must then provide written notice of any report to the President of the Legislative Council and the Speaker of the House of Assembly, which must then be laid before their respective houses.

The bill requires that a notice of a report made by a prescribed officer to the Office of Public Integrity be laid before both houses of parliament, without those reports first being investigated. Obviously that is a circumvention in some ways of the provisions of the act that set up the Office of Public Integrity, which said that investigations must be kept essentially secret until they are done and completed and that has gone through. This bill is going around that, which is a bad thing in my view and in the government's view, more importantly in this particular case, seeing as it is not a conscience vote.

I would like to remind the house of a little bit of history, because it is interesting that it is the Liberal Party that brought in widening of the Freedom of Information Act. In my experience as a minister and also as a member of the house, there is a greater flow of information through freedom of information than there ever has been. When I was a minister there were regularly reports coming up to me of what was being sent, which is fine, and we never got in the way of that. We did not make an attempt to stop it. There were reams and reams and reams of paper, and quite a lot of time was taken up by the department sending this information out.

I suspect that a large chunk of it sits in offices in this building and does not even get read. I think it just gets asked for. I suspect a lot of it is fairly routine, and, to be honest, a large part of what was originally being regularly requested is now going up on websites—office expenses, travel details, all of those sorts of things—

Mr Knoll: Overseas travel.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: Even overseas travel. It all goes up on the websites; ministerial offices put them up all the time. All of the information that perhaps the member for Schubert may have requested once through freedom of information is now available on websites where he can happily look them up to his heart's content. He spends a lot of time on the web during question time; he can look up all that information as he chooses to do so.

I would like to remind members of a time not so long ago, around 2002, during the formation of the government. Members might recall at the time that it was a minority government, and the then member for Hammond (Mr Lewis), who eventually became the Speaker, was considering his options about which party he would support: whether he would support the Liberal Party, where he had come from, or whether he would chose to support the Labor Party. As people know, he chose to support the Labor Party, Mike Rann became premier, and it turned out reasonably well for all concerned, at least on this side of the house.

The Hon. P. Caica: Yes, very well; and has ever since.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: That's true. But, at the time, as part of those negotiations, the member for Hammond put forward to both parties the same document, and a large chunk of that revolved around freedom of information. People with long memories will remember that during the unhappy period between 1993 and 2002, when there was a Liberal government, it was very difficult to get information out of the government. Freedom of information requests were regularly held up.

As part of that compact for good government that the member for Hammond was introducing, he put it to both parties that there should be a reform of the Freedom of Information Act. It was something that we on this side of the house accepted, and, when we subsequently got into government, enacted. That is why it is so easy for those on that side of the house to actually get information that they request under freedom of information. We, as the Labor Party and the government at the time, put through those reforms that were needed to open that up.

Often, copies of documents that went to the Liberal Party arrived in in the Labor Party at a later date. When one copy of that agreement that was negotiated between the Liberal Party and the then member for Hammond, it was really interesting, because a lot of them involved things around freedom of information. You will note clause after clause promoting open and accountable government was crossed out. Points 1 and 2 were crossed out and initialled. 'Rebuild freedom of information legislation to give full and proper access to government documents' was crossed out and not agreed to by the Liberal Party, initialled by Rob Kerin and Dean Brown.

Points on 'reducing the restriction on access to documents on the grounds of cabinet confidentiality' has been crossed out; 'removing restrictions based on commercial confidentiality', crossed out; 'removing obstructions, such as excessive cross-claims and appeals against documents', all crossed out. These are all things the Liberal Party never agreed to, and this was when they were negotiating to get back into government.

The commitment of the Liberal Party to freedom of information is somewhat obscure, in my view. I am looking forward to seeing more of the hypocrisy of the Liberal Party at some point in the future, but, for now, the government is very happy to oppose this somewhat ridiculous bill as it comes to the house.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (11:28): It is very disappointing that this government, after 13 years, cannot handle the truth. They cannot handle the truth, Deputy Speaker. They are afraid of truth, and they are afraid of transparency. We have had a report given by an independent ombudsman—May 2014. How much time do you need? What is the Attorney doing? I know what he is doing: the Attorney is writing poor dad jokes; that is what he is doing. Instead if writing poor dad jokes, he should be looking at the report of the Ombudsman.

If the Attorney looked at that report, he would see that there are a number of recommendations. He needs to get off his backside and put these recommendations into law, because this is a farce. The government is a farce; they cannot handle the truth. There are sensible recommendations, and they should put them into law and show the people of South Australia that they have nothing to hide.

I thank the speakers and all those who were consulted in the process, and, of course, the drafters of the bill as well. I commend the bill to the house.

The house divided on the second reading:

Ayes 16

Noes 19

Majority 3

AYES
Bell, T.S. Gardner, J.A.W. (teller) Goldsworthy, R.M.
Griffiths, S.P. Knoll, S.K. McFetridge, D.
Pederick, A.S. Pengilly, M.R. Redmond, I.M.
Sanderson, R. Speirs, D. Tarzia, V.A.
Treloar, P.A. van Holst Pellekaan, D.C. Whetstone, T.J.
Wingard, C.
NOES
Bedford, F.E. Brock, G.G. Caica, P.
Close, S.E. Cook, N. Digance, A.F.C.
Gee, J.P. Hamilton-Smith, M.L.J. Hildyard, K.
Hughes, E.J. Kenyon, T.R. (teller) Key, S.W.
Koutsantonis, A. Mullighan, S.C. Odenwalder, L.K.
Piccolo, A. Picton, C.J. Rau, J.R.
Wortley, D.
PAIRS
Chapman, V.A. Vlahos, L.A. Duluk, S.
Rankine, J.M. Marshall, S.S. Weatherill, J.W.
Pisoni, D.G. Snelling, J.J. Williams, M.R.
Bignell, L.W.K.

Second reading thus negatived.

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