faulker03

Paul Farrell of Guardian Australia was not only busy on the Nauru files in recent weeks , he's also been a very interested party in the challenge in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to refusal of his Freedom of information application for documents about boat turnbacks.   We will have to wait until the AAT decision for the detail but among a number of issues the case is testing is the meaning of “security of the Commonwealth” in the FOI act. According to this report "Farrell’s barrister pushed the point that “national security” was not relevant for operations that were unlawful and the government’s incursions into Indonesian waters, which were covered in some of these logs, were unlawful in his view ." Guardian Australia’s barrister Tom Brennan told the hearing : “Security in the Asio act goes beyond that which is dealt within the FoI act, because it’s not limited to the security of the body politic. It’s directed also to the security of people.“There can be no do...

The freedom of information system wouldn't produce anything like the Nauru Files published by Guardian Australia today following a leak of more than 2000 incident reports from the Immigration detention cent re .  After all, when Guardian Australia had a crack at formally obtaining the Detention Logs a couple of years ago, 'smart lawyering' not transparency and accountability prevailed . A nd that was before the issue of exemptions even arose. Hat tip this time to Paul Farrell, Nick Evershed and Helen Davidson and the unknown person or persons risking up to two years imprisonment under Section 42 of the Australian Border Force Act 2015 for secreting this cache out of the system.  There is no defence to the charge of disclosure of protected information (any information obtained in the performance of duties) by an entrusted person ( employee, contractor or consultant) regardless of the significance or insignificance of the information. The reports published "set out ...