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14 Responses to “DBCDE Refuses Tech Wired’s NBN FOI”Trackbacks
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[...] informed about Tech Wired’s failed attempt at retrieving the NBN expert panel report under FOI (Freedom of Information) laws before the NBN [...]
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Considering the amount of news all of this has been getting I’d say its of great interest to the public.
That and how can they turn around and refuse this after they’ve already said yes and accepted your deposit :-/
Sounds fishy to me.
I thought you were joking for a brief instant when I saw this on Twitter.
It just leaves me scratching my head and wondering if the left hand knows that the right is slitting their throat.
Just remember here, that “in the public interest” is not the same thing as “interesting to the public”. I haven’t had a chance to read anything else on this yet, but that’s just my first pointer to keeping a perspective.
It was going to cost you over $3000 to get this document!!! What a waste of money!
@Bryce
It still cost iiNet $900+
Well, there you go.
An ‘open and transparent’ process.
Thanks Ben.
Nice investigative work Ben, but now that we all know this; are we really suprised? :\
I love the line in section 36, “.. would be contrary to the public interest”.
What the hell is the point of the FOI act then?
I’m not in the least surprised by this on several grounds. As Stilgherrian said, the public interest does not equate to interesting to the public.
As an ex-public servant who has had to “discover” material the subject of an FOI request, the reasons (not disclosable in detail) that an FOI request may be refused in whole or in part are often highly esoteric. They often bemused me at best (and infuriated me at worst).
The FOI Act is rarely, in my experience, used to aid in the disclosure of material that ought to be disclosed. Rather, it’s used to block access to the very material that ought to be revealed as someone wants to protect their political backside. The public sector, especially the senior executive, is there to serve the government of the day and they very much answer to their masters.
It looks like our friend at DBCDE has a facebook profile
Interesting.
The FOI regulator could withhold just about any document citing contrary interest to public well being and no-one would ever be able to challenge it – obviously because the public can’t see it.
It’s like Alston’s absurd net censorship regime. ACMA jealously guards the list of URLs for sites it serves notices against so we don’t actually get to know from what exactly we’re being “protected”.
FOI requests to see them I believe have failed.
This whole process has been depressing me to the point it’s affecting my ability to write about it.
I’m appalled that some upstart public servant is so intent on bullshitting their way out of the DBCDE’s cluster-fuck, though I’m hardly surprised by it.
As correct as Stil is, it would be interesting to know on what basis they have deemed it to be against public interest to disclose this information.
Only days later the Rudd Government has announced sweeping changes to the FOI laws.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/sweeping-changes-to-foi-laws-20090324-980e.html
“Departments will no longer have the power to withhold documents because they might embarrass governments, cause a loss of confidence, could lead to misunderstanding or confusion, or cause unnecessary debate.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the last of those the EXACT reason used to reject TWAU’s FOI request?
In addition to that, the very next line from the article states “The public interest changes also mean documents will no longer stay secret just because their authors hold senior positions in government agencies.”
It’s almost as though these changes are specifically targetted at Senator Conjob! Can this guy seriously go even a week without putting his foot in it and appearing to world+dog as an incompetent hopeless fool?
–>Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the last of those the EXACT reason used to reject TWAU’s FOI request? <—-
Nope. The main reason the WHOLE report refused release under the FOI (ie determined to be exempt )was that it was a Cabinet document. And as your linked article states in its final paragragraph, “Cabinet documents will still remain exempt……”
So all the govenrment needs to to do under these so called ’sweeping’ FOI changes to continue this pratice is render Reports and and similar documents ‘Cabinet documents’ and ‘internal documents’ so they won’t be released. That ‘oh, we really did intend for this to be a CABINET submission all along…”. LOL.
The more things change the more they stay EXACTLY the same…….