faulker03

How the damning material in videos about the treatment of young boys in the Northern Territory Don Dale Youth Detention Centre came into the hands of ABC Four Corners is not known but with a Royal Commission to investigate the system all may/will be revealed in due course.   The public record includes The NT Children's Commissioner Don Dale Youth Detention Centre Report to Minister September 2015 pdf that provides details of one of the worst instances of mistreatment but not the videos.    Almost certainly the video footage wasn't offered up by those responsible for the system or delivered on a plate via the Information Act 2002.   If someone on the inside thumbed through the Public Interest Disclosure Act beforehand he/she would know it provides protections for reporting through official channels but none for public disclosure to the media or anyone else for any reason, falling short of what is regarded as best practice.     A look further to the...

This post in March commented on the slow, closed door approach to review of open government legislation in NSW and elsewhere. The NSW P arliament imposes deadlines but they pass ... and pass. T he Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 and the Government Information (Information Commissioner) Act 2009 include a requirement for a statutory review to be undertaken by the Minister administering the act "as soon as possible after the period of 5 years from the date of assent to this Act" with a report to be tabled in each House of Parliament within 12 months after the end of the period of 5 years. The review is to determine whether the policy objectives remain valid and whether the terms of the Acts remain appropriate for securing these objectives.  The date of assent for b o th acts was 26 June 2009 , the date of commencement 1 July 2010. Five years after the date of assen t takes us to 26 June 201 4 . A period of 12 months after the end of 5 years for the repo...

Attorney General Senator Brandis led the unsuccessful two year battle to abolish the Office of Australian Information Commissioner that ended in May 2016 when the government announced it would not proceed, finally recognising the weight of numbers in the Senate that favoured an independent watchdog to keep an eye on information access practices.   Now reappointed, the Attorney General according to ZDnet will appoint Timothy Pilgrim for the fifth time as Acting Australian Information Commissioner next week   The office operated from January to June 2015 with two of the three commissioner positions parliament established when it created the office, and since that time with one.   Senator Brandis told Senate Estimates (Q&A pp 42-44) in May this year the decision in  2014 to abolish the office was a 'good economy measure-and we haven't changed our mind."   Following the election, numbers of those in the Senate who have a different view than the Attorney Gener...

It's still up in the air as to who governs - and therefore gets to call most of the shots - and perhaps what the successful major party leader will have to agree to in order to form a government.  Then on an ongoing basis, there is uncertainty about the constraints or influences that will apply to the government policy and legislative agendas because of numbers in the House and Senate. T ransparency, accountability, public integrity, citizen participation , all elements of good government , hardly rated a mention on the campaign hustings. But o ne welcome outcome from the current mess is that three major players, Labor, the Greens and NXT have more open, transparent government on their list of priorities.  In contrast to the Coalition which offered nothing in this space during the election campaign other than open data and more digital services. Those new commitments came on top of the Turnbull government decision to join the Open Government Partnership , a decision s...