SA has nation’s worst freedom information laws, study finds
SOUTH Australia has the worst Freedom of Information laws in the nation, which the “uncooperative” State Government uses to block and delay the release of information to the public, a study has found.
SOUTH Australia has the worst Freedom of Information laws in the nation, which the “uncooperative” State Government uses to block and delay the release of information to the public, a study has found.
The Monash University study, published in the Australian Journalism Review, was designed to find out if newer, user-friendly FOI systems in some states provided a better service to the public.
“South Australia proved to be the most disappointing and least co-operative of the jurisdictions,’’ the study found.
“SA’s approach to FOI seems designed to block, delay and obfuscate.’’
The State Government has dismissed the findings as a “very long stretch” because similar information — not all that was asked for by the researcher — was already made public without the need for an FOI application.
Monash School of Media senior lecturer and author of the paper, Dr Johan Lidberg, said the study used FOI laws around the country to access the same information about “expenses for premiers and chief ministers in Australia’’ to compare like with like.
The frustrations they experienced with the SA system included;
FAILURE to respond within 30 days, requiring a second application.
REFUSAL to deal via email or telephone.
PAYING another $32.25 for the second application.
REQUIRING the Ombudsman to “order” the Department of Premier and Cabinet to process the request.
WAITING another few weeks for the documents to arrive, a total of 112 days compared with the fastest, Queensland at 2.5 days.
“No other jurisdiction behaved like this in dealing with my requests,’’ Dr Lidberg concluded, adding: “While efficiency varied, only SA could be viewed as taking an uncooperative approach to application.’’
The study compared newer so-called 2.0 “push” systems in place federally and in Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania, to their predecessors — the 1.0 “pull” systems — which are still in place in South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.
Pull systems require journalists and members of the public to extract information from often unwilling government departments while push systems, which began in 2009, require departments to make information public by default, unless they can justify why it should not be available.
But a spokesman for acting Attorney-General Kyam Maher rejected the findings, and said the conclusions were “a stretch”.
He said such information was published regularly and accessible without the need for FOI requests.