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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-17 Daily Xml
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Freedom of Information

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:22): My question is to the Deputy Premier.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Extinction Rebellion?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Can the Deputy Premier provide an update to the house in relation to her office's compliance with the Freedom of Information Act? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I am obsessed with government transparency. Not that I should respond to interjections.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Hurtle Vale! Member for West Torrens! The member for Florey is warned.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Yes, they don't like their deputy being asked questions.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Florey is on two warnings. The member for Hurtle Vale is warned for a second time. The leader has the call.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: On 23 February 2023, the Deputy Premier told the ABC, and I quote:

My office has had some challenges with Freedom of Information and we've had some feedback from the Ombudsman. I've had a really good exchange of letters with him this week and we have put some more resources on and we are reviewing ones that are outstanding at present to make sure that we are complying properly.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (14:24): Yes, my office has received some 149 FOI applications.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Newland! The Premier is called to order. Member for Morialta! The Leader is called to order. Member for Newland! The Deputy Premier has the call.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Seventy-four of those have come in since 10 January.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: In an office of about nine administrative staff, we have had to dedicate one—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: That's about 12 per month.

The SPEAKER: Member for Morialta!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —entirely to managing FOI.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: There were responses that I think were not adequate in either their timing or their accuracy, early on. Given that we had that feedback, we had some assistance for a short period of time from Premier and Cabinet to regularise our processes—

An honourable member interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —and now we have an additional person, as I say, who has been dedicated solely to managing the FOIs largely, but not only, from the Leader of the Opposition. So although I would say that at times when there are several in a week being dealt with—there are currently, I think, 11 that are live—we are in a much better position than we were previously to manage the volume of questions that have come through.

One of the challenges has been very generalised applications, things like 'asbestos'. We had to look through every single document to try to find the word asbestos. Similarly, the portfolio agencies have experienced a very high volume of requests from the Leader of the Opposition in particular. There was the rather peculiar one that went to one agency that just wanted all documents including pronoun or pronouns, which took some time to manage.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Newland! Member for Morialta! Member for Chaffey! The member for Newland is warned.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Given that the question or the explanation, or perhaps a response to interjection, referred to the importance of transparency, it is a little difficult given that when the Leader of the Opposition was a minister he spent 18 months not replying to a single letter I wrote to him on behalf of my constituents, and indeed—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Mawson is warned. The member for Newland is on two warnings. Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: So what you're saying is that this is personal.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is on two warnings.

The Hon. P.B. Malinauskas: I think there's a certain obsession going on here.

The SPEAKER: The Premier is called to order.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: There was an FOI not put in by myself—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Morialta!

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: There was an FOI put in by one of my colleagues during that time that took more than a year for the minister's office to respond to.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Was the pronoun the royal 'we', David?

The SPEAKER: The Treasurer is called to order.

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