faulker03

At a time when threats to privacy abound including from a federal government that lays claim to a watchdog role to safeguard our right to privacy, a government whose leader before the 2013 election committed to increasing government transparency and accountablity, Australia today has no permanent federal information commissioner , no federal privacy commissioner, and no federal freedom of information commissioner.  The Office of Australian Information Commissioner established in 2010 to enable the commissioners to carry out their functions with an initial estimate of staff required of 100, now has around 65. Attorney General Brandis is presiding over the erosion of protections put in place to safeguard the right to privacy and promote and oversight the exercise of the right to access  government information.    Australian Information Commissioner Professor John McMillan resigned today to become NSW Ombudsman. (Open and Shut joins the OAIC in expressing thanks for his many years of

Registration closes Friday for The Australian New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) Conference 2015 in Melbourne next month: Opening Government Transparency and Engagement in the Information Age-40 speakers 2 days The 1 Event You Can't Afford to Miss"   Sounds great.  If you (or your employer) can afford it. $2395 for the full package , whew!  The program is jam packed with public servants, former public servants now consultants and academics but few if any sign of citizens, journalists and others who sit on the other side of the open government, transparency and engagement tables. Whether the eventual audience made up of those who can afford it will be more diverse, who knows. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for ‘ Too much information?’: FOI’s defenders meet its critics chaired by Senator The Hon Scott Ryan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education & Training, featuring Andrew Metcalfe a long time one time Secretary of the Department of Immigrati

In a Freedom of Information review application in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal today, Shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus QC challenged the Government's refusal to release the Incoming Government Brief Attorney-General Senator Brandis received from his department on taking office in 2013. The AAT challenge comes 12 months after Australian Information Commissioner Professor John McMillan substantially upheld the AGD decision to refuse access to the brief ( Parnell &  Dreyfus) . At the time he used similar reasoning (Crowe) to refuse access to unreleased parts of the brief prepared in 2010 for then incoming Prime Minister Gillard.  It's an important opportunity to test the public interest arguments accepted in those decisions - see my comment s at the time - as "Frank and Candid" have since become some FOI decision makers' best friend.   Attorney General's in this example managed to soak up sixteen months with "Frank and Candid" argu