Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Again I will be supporting the member for Indi's amendment, because clearly the attempt by the government to greatly increase the exemptions to the FOI framework are unwarranted. Again, as a matter of principle, the effort to do this will be an impediment to the community's access to information thereby promoting democracy through public participation and scrutiny. That's self-evident; I don't need to talk in any more detail about that. Surely we should be doing everything to shine a light on governance and public administration, and we should be taking no backwards steps in that regard. I would also make the point—and the member for Indi has already touched on this—that the robodebt royal commission made a very, very clear recommendation:

… the Government should end the blanket approach to confidentiality of Cabinet documents. To give effect to this, section 34 of the FOI Act should be repealed. The wide range of class and conditional exemptions in the FOI Act is sufficient to protect the public interest in relation to Cabinet documents. The mere fact that a document is a Cabinet document should not, by itself, be regarded as justifying maintenance of its secrecy.

In other words we shouldn't be having a debate about the merits of increasing the exemptions; we should be having a debate about the merits of reducing exemptions. I would like—this is going to be a little bit indulgent, so bear with me—to recount something out of my own personal experience. The students of ancient history in the Federation Chamber might remember that 20 or so years ago I got myself into terrible strife when I resigned from the Office of National Assessments and went to the media. I accused the Howard government of misleading the Australian community over the reasons for the invasion of Iraq. One of the reasons I resigned and went public was my concern as a public servant and intelligence official that, if I just ventilated my concerns internally, they wouldn't be reported. They'd be buried and they would never see the light of day. Heavens, if for any reason one day there should be one or in fact two inquiries into Australia's misplaced invasion of Iraq, there'd be no record of it.

My experience was that, if I as a public servant had been able to give frank and fearless advice and if it had been recorded carefully, I might've been more comfortable sticking with the team and not resigning from ONA. The point I'm getting to is that this claim that the current FOI framework is a barrier to frank and fearless advice is actually back to front. I think public servants would be much more comfortable with giving frank and fearless advice if they knew that it was written down and noted carefully. One day, if the government's refusal to heed that frank and fearless advice was made public, then it would be the government's problem, and I would be vindicated. I wouldn't stand accused as an incompetent—or worse, unprofessional—public servant that wasn't giving frank and fearless advice.

I'll make this point as firmly as I can. The claim that frank and fearless advice is not being provided, because public servants are scared of their advice one day being publicised, is quite misleading—in fact, it's terribly misleading. We have a world-class public service. It's really world-class. It's populated by officials and senior officials who want to give frank and fearless advice, and they want it to be recorded. They are quite comfortable with their advice being one day publicised, in particular if the government makes a serious misstep by—hmm!—accidentally invading a country for fraudulent reasons! Then that advice would clear those officials of any sort of incompetence or unprofessional behaviour. Good on the member for Indi. It's another good amendment, and I'll be supporting it.

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