Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

To assist the House, I thought it would be useful to give some explanation, given that these amendments were debated last night in the Federation Chamber and there may be many members who didn't have a chance to hear that debate.

In a bill full of antidemocratic reforms that will worsen transparency and accountability, these amendments are particularly important because they go to the question of the expansion of cabinet exemptions. Under the bill that is before us, the test of exemptions is elastic and will be stretched in practice, meaning the public's right to access government information can be determined by whether the public servant thinks it would involve an exempt document. While you can appeal, many people will simply give up on that.

It's already incredibly difficult under the current FOI Act to access documents that have gone anywhere near the cabinet room, and years of litigation have established a very high threshold for the disclosure of documents involved in the cabinet process. I fully respect and support the principle of cabinet solidarity. There must be rigorous and appropriate protections for cabinet confidentiality where it's needed, but, under this bill, anything considered or even simply noted in the cabinet process will be exempt, rather than the previous definition, which referred specifically to deliberation and decision-making. I'm also extremely concerned that the previous 'dominant purpose' test will be replaced by a 'substantive purpose' test, increasing the threshold even higher.

Under these proposals, a document could be exempt simply because it helped to inform the minister in relation to an issue the cabinet will consider. I believe, and I think many people do—civil society organisations from right across the nation say that this is a long bow, way too long. This is a serious extension of what is considered cabinet confidentiality. My amendments seek to remedy that issue, and I really ask members of the House to think very carefully about what we're doing under these freedom-of-information laws, consider their vote and support these amendments.

See this speech in context