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All about events for Right to Know Day Thursday 28 September. In particular: The Office of the Information Commissioner, Queensland is holding the annual Solomon Lecture for Right to Know Day on 28 September 2017. Mr Kerry O’Brien, one of Australia’s most distinguished and respected journalists, will deliver this year’s lecture and draw on the 30th anniversary of the Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland as an opportunity to revisit some of the lessons learnt over the past three decades around open government, including the media’s role. Following the Lecture will be a panel discussion featuring Channel 7’s Freedom of Information Editor, Alison Sandy, Queensland University of Technology Vice Chancellor Peter Coaldrake AO and Dr David Solomon AM. Journalist Madonna King will lead the panel discussion. Live stream: www.ustream.tv/channel/the-edge-external-events 28 September 2017 We encourage all Australians to explore their Right to Know. Take a moment to discover the impor

Whose interests? Why defining the 'public interest' is such a challenge What may be deemed in the public interest today may not be so in a decade’s time. shutterstock Jane Johnston , The University of Queensland The “public interest” is a political concept that’s regularly trotted out along with other democratic principles such as transparency and accountability. And, like transparency and accountability, it’s difficult to pin down exactly what it means. Former NSW Ombudsman Chris Wheeler has pointed out: … while it is one of the most used terms in the lexicon of public administration, it is arguably the least defined and least understood … identifying or determining the appropriate public interest in any particular case is often no easy task. Centuries of scholarship examine the public interest alongside the “common good”, “common interest”, and “public good”, associated with some big names in political philosophy. Common among their thinking was the idea that governme