Ditto for the medical files of people killed or injured by substandard health care in our hospitals.

I wont be holding my breath waiting for the QLD or NSW governments doing that.

FOI available to the public is obviously a good thing. The ability for department staff and ministers to work effectively without being overburdend with opinion undermining their own discretion (the very reason they were voted to their position) is also important.

FOI takes precedence, but there has to be a balance. As you said Bernard, old habbits die hard. If FOI becomes to cumbersome to get work done, ministers will find another way around it.

Then to that add any organisation whatsoever that manages any property or facility owned by any level of government. Thus any privaite provider using and managing a facility for any level of government would be equally liable, and about time to.

I think this FOI bill is also likely to encourage Departments to be more efficient about FOI as they will soon realise that rather than eating into their Deptal budgets by taking on more FOI staff they’d be better off 1) proactively publishing as much information as possible on their websites, and 2) making sure that what they publish is credible and transparent (ie honest) so that it does not simply raise more questions and FOI requests. I suspect its going to be a particularly difficult transition for the many senior managers who have been selected far more for their commitment and capacity as highly paid marketing staff, of the disingenuous kind, rather than for their rational policy or management skills.

Re: dealing with old habits: to me one of the biggest impediments to accountable government is the primacy given to the loyal collusion between Cabinet and the public service. The secrecy and lack of clear responsibilities has allowed a gaping hole to develop in the accountability of Executive government to the public. But with a strengthened FOI Australia could be a step closer to adopting the NZ model where transparency is already the default (though not always in practice) and where responsibilities have been divided so that the public service is responsible for outputs and Ministers are responsible for outcomes. While admittedly NZ is far from perfecting this division in practice and are not very far in developing ‘performance cultures’, there is a noticeable difference in the information made available and the openness of public servants in the media both in contributing to public debates and being held accountable for Departmental performance issues. I think they’re on the right track.

This is welcome but a shift in attitude in agencies such as Treasury and Defence will be better indicators of a new era of openness.