The scandal behind the many stories we’ve been unable to tell you

There’s something rotten in the state of Victoria.

What is it, you ask? We wish we could tell you. But it’s difficult to find out.

Some people in the east of Melbourne might have issues with the plans for the $35 billion Suburban Rail Loop East, but they’ve signed an agreement not to talk about it. That way they can be quite sure that their grants from the rail loop’s Community Projects Fund aren’t jeopardised. Indeed, there are a number of other things they’re barred from mentioning.

The presumption of secrecy around the government’s activities is eating at the fabric of our democracy.Credit: iStock

“The organisation will ensure ... recipients do not do anything that may damage, bring into disrepute or ridicule the SRL project, or the authority’s or the Victorian government’s name, messages or reputation,” say the non-disclosure agreements signed by not-for-profits in return for state cash.

It’s quite a commitment. But then the SRL was born in secrecy, the agency responsible for its delivery knowing nothing about it until it was announced and the senior transport bureaucrat working on its design legally gagged from telling his boss.

Then there’s the North East Link, the largest and most expensive road project in Victoria’s history, due to open in 2028. From an initial forecast of $10 billion, its cost has blown out to $26 billion. Would you like to know about some of the people it has had to compensate for house and car repairs, or to mitigate the effects of construction on their lives? So would we. But they are among the more than 7000 parties who have signed non-disclosure agreements with the agency behind the tollway.

Infrastructure lawyer Owen Hayford has said that while the use of NDAs to protect commercially sensitive information and matters related to security could be understood, “that there are more than 7000 [for North East Link] begs the question as to are they [the government authority] protecting truly confidential information or are they pulling a veil of secrecy over every bit of information, including information in which the public has a legitimate interest”.

On Tuesday night, that question arose again, this time focused on a single man: Matthew Irving, the director of Infrastructure and City Services at Hobsons Bay Council.

The council and residents of Newport and Williamstown are in a tug of war with the state government’s Level Crossing Removal Project over its plans to permanently close a road that connects the two suburbs. Irving, in the course of doing his job, wanted to find out more about the project’s plans. But that meant having to sign a confidentiality agreement.

“I did not feel comfortable to do so as I saw the type of information that I would be exposed to as not needing to be confidential,” Irving told Tuesday’s council meeting.

The Age believes Irving’s stand in this matter is to be commended. The presumption of secrecy around the activities of this government and its agencies is eating at the fabric of our democracy and the public’s right to know and hold officials accountable. The one thing that is transparent about it is the desire of a defensive and paranoid government to shape the narrative around its policies. The rest is murk.

This troubling approach to information has found its way into our court system, where suppression orders have proliferated even in the absence of any specified grounds for them, making a mockery of the Open Courts Act and giving Victoria an unenviable reputation as the suppression leader of the nation. The Age believes any time spent reviewing the Open Courts Act would be worthwhile.

Our media lawyer Sam White has recently raised concerns regarding the state’s Freedom of Information Act. Journalists and others far too often find themselves tied in knots and wasting valuable time in tribunals trying to elicit responses to the simplest queries on matters that should be in the public domain. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal clearly lacks the funding and resources it requires to properly ensure compliance with the FOI Act in a timely manner.

Like Matthew Irving, we believe that too many things that Victorians have a right to know have been deemed confidential. And we think that when it comes to freedom of information, the default should be that information is released, rather than having to be dragged out of official sources – in short, a push model that provides information, rather than a pull model in which it is mostly withheld.

As Justice Stephen McDonald recently noted in the Federal Court in a case involving disgraced soldier Ben Roberts-Smith and former Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty, “there is a general right of access to information … limited only by exceptions and exemptions necessary for the protection of essential public interests”. That protection should not extend to image management for politicians and their offsiders.

The silencing of dissent and the concealment of the operations of those in power are the hallmarks of authoritarianism. Whether it is the fate of a level crossing in a local council or the details of a multibillion-dollar project, the public interest is best served by openness.

Good governance in Victoria depends on it.

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