Time for the Government to be transparent

EDITORIAL: Governments keeping things secret from the voting public is a clear and present danger to our cherished democracy.

Treasurer Peter Gutwein described the Expressions of Interest process as “an open and transparent framework”.

IT might upset the Government and the tourism lobby groups, but our front page story on Thursday about the secrecy in the Government’s so-called Expressions of Interest process goes to the heart of what the Your Right to Know campaign is about.

There has been a slow but steady change over the past two decades in the way governments across Australia view transparency. We have now reached the point where today keeping things secret from the voting public is seen as the logical default, rather than the other way around. This, in turn, encourages dodgy deals or corruption — both of which inevitably flourish in the absence of the disinfectant of openness.

That is not to say there is anything necessarily dodgy going on when it comes to the Hodgman Government’s expressions of interest process for tourism developments in national parks and on Crown land. But we will never know — because Treasurer and Environment and Parks Minister Peter Gutwein has reaffirmed the Government’s view that the details of such proposals should remain secret until they are endorsed, so as to protect the intellectual property of the proponents.

But don’t you worry about that, Mr Gutwein added when asked on Wednesday about this by our political editor David Killick — “should we assess a project and determine that it will move to lease and license stage, THEN it will be made public” (emphasis added).

But there’s a catch! The terms and conditions of any of the lease and licence agreements will also remain hidden from public view forever because they are considered commercial-in-confidence. They are also exempt from the provisions of the state’s Right to Information Act, so you can’t ever hope to find out.

Despite all this, Mr Gutwein describes the process as “an open and transparent framework”. And that would be the end of it, if it were not for the determination of the state’s journalists to reply not by saying “thank you, Big Brother” but instead declaring that we all have a Right to Know — and promising to take a stand on behalf of their readers, listeners or viewers.

The tourism lobby says it’s all fine because all the Government is doing in “approving” the proposals is giving them the green light to start the planning and assessment processes as laid out in state and federal legislation — processes that do play out in public.

But that’s not the point. The just-as-critical stage is that one that comes before that: the government assessment stage. Tasmanians have a right to know exactly what is being proposed. That should be the default. If proponents have certain ideas they want to keep hidden from the public then there should be an accountable process by which that decision is made.

Every Australian shares an expectation that we live in an open and transparent society. Every Australian should have the right to know about decisions being made by their elected representatives in their name. They deny it, but by their actions it is clear to see that our governments now pretty well all operate on the basis of a culture that by default keeps things secret — often just because they just don’t want uncomfortable ideas discussed. And that means that voters (who are also, of course, taxpayers) don’t have the information to make informed decisions. That is a clear and present danger to our cherished democracy.