Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Freedom of Information Amendment (Parliamentary Budget Office) Bill 2012 and particularly commend the member for Throsby on his contribution to the debate. I know he has a long history with this, because of his time with the CPSU, who would have covered many of the members who deal with freedom of information requests. So his words, particularly on the conclusive certificates, were particularly useful, and I will not go over the information he put forward in his speech.

Freedom of information is crucial for good government. That is the reality of a modern democracy. And I say this as a member of the Labor Party: I am passionate about democracy. Whilst I wear a Labor Party hat and am proud to be part of the Labor caucus, my faith and belief in democracy transcends that. FOI laws, which can be traced back to the Hawke-Keating time, are a particularly Labor initiative in terms of embracing the transparency that comes with good government. I say that as someone who comes from Queensland, where Premier Wayne Goss was instrumental in bringing dramatic transformation of the Queensland approach to the public service, and FOI is an important part of that.

Unfortunately I grew up in a time when Joh Bjelke-Petersen had a very cavalier approach to democracy. We had the gerrymander; we had infringement of civil rights; we had a very closed-shop approach to what democracy was. Sadly, today, in Queensland we have drifted back to some of those bad old days of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. However, the bill in front of us is about amending the Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Commonwealth legislation to protect the confidentiality of documents held by agencies in relation to the confidential requests made to the independent Parliamentary Budget Office.

The Parliamentary Budget Office is not far from where I am standing now. I think it is about a sand wedge away in golf terms. It would be good for those on the other side of the chamber to acquaint themselves with how close it is, a short walk. It would be great for them to commit upfront to taking their policy documents, when they are taken out of the bottom drawer that Andrew Robb referred to—

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