Private medical and police record searches would be free under FOI shake-up

Victorians would not be charged for accessing their own medical, police or TAC records under a sweeping shake-up of freedom of information laws that would also see more documents proactively released.

The Integrity and Oversight Committee’s final report into the state’s FOI laws, tabled on Monday, made 101 recommendations after finding the current 40-year-old model was “struggling to meet the needs of our modern democracy”.

Greens MP Tim Read says Victorians shouldn’t have to pay the state government for access to their own medical records. Credit: Eddie Jim

It includes a call for Victoria to shift to a “push” system where more information is proactively sent out, rather than the current model, which requires people to “pull” it out of government agencies with formal requests.

The report also says people should not be charged to access their own personal and health information and suggested the costs associated with non-personal information requests should be limited to reasonable photocopying expenses.

While the committee, which features Allan government MPs, did not go as far as to recommend the release of cabinet documents after 30 days, as is the case in Queensland and New Zealand, it did call for the narrowing of cabinet-in-confidence exemptions.

The committee’s chair, Greens MP Tim Read, said more than two-thirds of FOI requests were made by individuals seeking information about themselves.

“Victoria’s Freedom of Information laws are no longer fit for purpose and certainly not fit for the digital age,” Read said. “Victorians shouldn’t have to pay for getting their medical records.”

The Brunswick MP went on to say that a dominant purpose test – where only documents explicitly prepared for cabinet would be shielded from public release – would prevent ministers and departments from using existing confidentiality exemptions in an “overly defensive fashion”.

“We’re very keen to no longer have a situation where, [according to] the apocryphal story, a document is just wheeled through the cabinet room and is considered exempt. It needs to have more than the aroma of cabinet to be considered exempt, and virtually anything else should be released.”

A government source, speaking to The Age on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said the committee’s Labor MPs had pushed for the dominant purpose test as a middle ground between protecting the longstanding principle of cabinet confidentiality and providing more transparency.

There was a view, the source said, that moving to a Queensland model would improve the perception of accountability but that all cabinet documents would end up being written like “a fact sheet you would attach to the back of a press release”.

“Government works better when ministers can disagree with each other and not worry that they’re going to be on the front page of the paper a month later,” the source said.

Asked on Monday if her government would commit to an overhaul of the state’s FOI system, Premier Jacinta Allan said: “We will consider the recommendations of the report and the government will respond in its usual way.”

Allan has six months to respond to the inquiry’s recommendations, according to parliamentary rules.

Read said he was confident the government would act.

“The government tasked us with this inquiry. There have been multiple reviews. And the committee was unanimous in the need for a ‘push’ system.”

Four Labor MPs, two members of the Coalition and two crossbench MPs sit on the integrity and oversight committee. The government last year agreed to make a non-government MP chair, something integrity experts had for years called for.

Victorian government agencies receive more than 48,000 requests for information annually, more than any other jurisdiction, including the Commonwealth.

Less than 80 per cent of FOI decisions are made on time, down from 95 per cent a decade ago. Complaints have more than doubled in that timeframe.

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