Ombudsman tells SA Deputy Premier Susan Close to smarten up on FOI documents

The state’s Ombudsman has lashed the Deputy Premier Susan Close for failing to act on FOI requests, prompting the Liberals to label her “lazy Susan”.

The state Ombudsman has lashed Deputy Premier Susan Close for her failure to handle basic Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

In a scathing report, Wayne Lines hit back at Dr Close after she claimed to be “inundated” with just 55 FOI requests in nine months.

Mr Lines said that volume was “in fact a very low number” and many government agencies would receive that many applications in a single month.

“Additionally, in each of the matters that has progressed to my office, the number of documents in issue has been relatively low; the highest number of documents for one matter was 15,” Mr Lines said in his report.

Dr Close said extra resources had now been added as she reviewed her office’s FOI procedures.

The Ombudsman has called out Deputy Premier Susan Close for her FOI procedures.

Her office failed to respond to several FOI requests submitted by the Opposition within 30 days, meaning access to documents was deemed to be refused. After also failing to respond to an internal review request, the matters were sent to the Ombudsman for investigation.

In one case, access was denied to all documents containing the word “asbestos” created between March and July last year because Dr Close did not respond within the statutory time frame, and the matter was sent to the Ombudsman.

Mr Lines said when Dr Close was notified of his review, she already had more than four months to process the FOI application.

“Despite that substantial amount of time, the Deputy Premier took a further two months to respond to my request for documents and submissions,” he said.

He also said the Deputy Premier failed to justify several claims that certain documents were “out of scope”.

South Australian Ombudsman Wayne Lines was scathing in his review.

Since last August, Mr Lines has received 10 external review requests after Dr Close’s office failed to respond to FOI applications.

“In every case the Deputy Premier has failed to justify her proposed refusals of access,” he said.

Opposition leader David Speirs said Ms Close’s “lazy reputation has become a serious problem” for Premier Peter Malinauskas.

“Lazy Susan Close either can’t be bothered doing work, is incapable of comprehending the tasks of her job, or just doesn’t care,” Mr Speirs said.

“Either which way, (Dr Close) has … been ordered to come clean with her secret government documents.”

Dr Close said the Liberals had lodged more than 80 FOI requests in the past 10 months, “representing a considerable amount of work for the small team within my office, (which) is not comparable to a large government department”.

“David Speirs’ FOI’s are almost exclusively about his former pet projects and reflect his obsession with his own legacy. Some of the requests included a single word such as ‘sulphur’ or ‘asbestos’, capturing large numbers of documents which all need to be reviewed,” the Deputy Premier said.

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