Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'll continue on. I didn't hear that interjection—it's one benefit of being remote; you don't get to hear all the wonderful interjections! Anyway, carrying on: the reasons for delay for FOI were multitudinous: first that it was commercial in confidence, then that it would compromise DFAT operations overseas, then that releasing the information would be contrary to the public interest and then that it was a complex case. After more than six months and an appeal, heavily redacted documents were finally released, but the delay meant that the 2016 election had already happened and the controversy had lost some of its significance.

Some of the other issues that the Your Right to Know campaign has emphasised have been kept hidden by poor FOI laws include details of kids being kept in adult watch houses, which sadly is still the case. Even a request for the menu from the Parliament House dining room was caught up in months and months of to and fro. It boggles the mind. Then of course we get to the persistent secrecy over political donations. While most states and territories have recognised the importance of transparency and require disclosure of donations within between seven and 21 days, political donations at the federal level can be kept secret for as long as 12 months. People would know that they get disclosed from 1 February every calendar year.

These remain prohibitive for small not-for-profits and for media. In a particularly egregious example, the Australian Conservation Foundation was asked to pay almost $500 for documents showing internal discussions on leaving climate change out of the government's 2015 Intergenerational report. After paying that fee, ACF got the documents with 241 of the 243 relevant pages deemed exempt and the remaining two pages partially redacted—and that cost almost 500 bucks. Without a robust FOI process, many details of concerning government behaviour come to light only through the bravery of whistleblowers—and of course our whistleblower protection legislation also needs to be strengthened—exposing sources and journalists relying on them to significant legal risk. Just ask Annika Smethurst, Daniel Oakes, Sam Clark, Witness K, Bernard Colleary, Richard Boyle and many others.

The culture of refusal and delay has resulted in a significantly higher workload for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, but they are chronically underfunded, and delays are banking up. In a response to a recent application for review submitted by my Senate colleague Senator Faruqi, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said: 'You will be advised about the next steps in the information commission review process once your application has been assessed by a senior member of the FOI team. Unfortunately, the OAIC has received an increase in the number of IC review applications, and we're endeavouring to process these as soon as practicable. The assessment by a senior member of the FOI team can take eight to 12 weeks and sometimes longer, depending on the complexity of the issues raised in the IC review. Due to the number of IC review applications on hand, allocation to a review officer may take up to 12 months. The act does not specify a time for completion of an IC review. The time taken will depend on a number of factors, depending on the complexity of your review.'

Clearly a delay of up to 12 months to even allocate an application for review to a particular officer is absolutely outrageous and unjustifiable. Without additional support to both internal FOI officers and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, agencies have no real incentive to proactively share information with the Australian people—which I'm sure suits the government down to the ground. The chronically underfunded FOI regime that we have makes it next to impossible for the public to stay informed about what its government is up to. The Greens will be supporting this bill as a step in the right direction to making FOI laws work, to give Australians access to information and to not facilitate government's further hiding of information.

We will continue to call for measures to hold this government to account, whether that be through more strongly enforced and independently administered ministerial standards, lower thresholds and real-time disclosures for political donations, or a strong, independent federal corruption watchdog. This is the least transparent government in history. It's the Canberra bubble. It's the words: 'We reject the premise of the question.' 'Cabinet-in-confidence' has been such an overused exemption to our FOI laws. You wheel something through the cabinet room, out it goes again and, hey presto, 'We don't need to tell anyone about it.' In terms of the Prime Minister's ministerial standards, you wouldn't even know whether or not he's applying them, although, if you look at the litany of scandals, it's pretty clear they're not being applied. But the process is so opaque that you have to seek to find out when they've been enforced. You aren't told about the process that's been used. Sports rorts is a perfect example there; we still don't have the Gaetjens report. There is absolutely no transparency about the enforcement, or otherwise, of those ministerial standards.

We still have no federal corruption watchdog. It's been almost one year since the Greens bill for a federal corruption watchdog passed the Senate, and it still hasn't been brought on for debate in the House of Representatives. The government initially used the excuse that they were going to introduce their own bill. In February of last year, they described that bill as 'imminent'. So, 18 months ago, their integrity commission bill was imminent. When I asked the minister about this unjustifiable delay, his excuse was the global pandemic, which has been on foot for six months—yet the bill was 'imminent' 18 months ago. So this excuse absolutely does not hold water. This government just can't hack scrutiny. It wants its ministers to be able to continue to engage in disreputable conduct and, often, in conduct involving conflicts of interest, and it wants them to continue doing so with impunity. We've seen executive powers used far more than is safe and robust for our democracy in this calendar year. The least we can do is tighten up FOI laws to make sure that members of the public and the media can access the information that they need, when they need it, at an affordable price.

The Greens will be supporting this bill, and we commend it to the chamber.