Comments on: ‘Hacking democracy’: a tool to streamline our Right To Know

By: Mike Smith

Mike Smith — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:57:04 +0000

@Anne: Why does a charity status bestow an exemption? It’s a private organisation, so that might. Should FOI extend to churches, especially given the propensity of some (European based) ones to hide their extremely dirty linen?

By: Brendan Sydes

Brendan Sydes — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:09:48 +0000

Great work Open Australia Foundation. This has the potential to revolutionize FoI processing by making it much more transparent. We at EDO Victoria do lots of FoI work for conservation NGOs and community groups that ought to be unnecessary if FoI worked properly - the delay and obstruction is shocking and a terrible waste of everyone’s time and money.

Now to extend this to state FoI systems …

By: Susan Timmins

Susan Timmins — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:28:39 +0000

From Peter Timmins
This success took a month to transpire but in a nice coincidence the document was released on Right to Know’s first official day.
http://foi-privacy.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/attorney-general-said-lets-join-ogp-but.html#.ULZzliN9YdM

By: Anne Greenaway

Anne Greenaway — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 07:46:11 +0000

What a shame the RSPCA is exempt from FOI requests due to it’s charity status.

There is also no Ombudsman for the RSPCA which many people believe makes it a law unto itself and accountable to no one.

The charity status needs to be removed from the RSPCA. Many of it’s activities are very businesslike (eg council contracts worth millions, State RSPCA’s, “PAW OF APPROVAL in labeling, vet clinics that charge market rates and pet insurance, just to name a few. Many people are not happy with the lack of transparency and lack of accountability associated with the RSPCA.

By: Hamis Hill

Hamis Hill — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 07:05:05 +0000

A lot of information, especially on the mapping of mineral resources, compiled at public expense, can by a process of corruption become the hidden, private knowledge of a few by unwarranted restriction on freedom of information.
The NBN, with its vast data crunching capacity threatens to uncover this process of private acquisition or “colonisation” of public knowledge for private advantage.
The NSW ICAC seems to be going down this path.
There will be a lot of data mining in the future which will archaeologially and forensically uncover the tangled webs intended to deceive.
How difficult is it to discover a criminal intent on the part of certain opponents of the NBN; ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free?
The spiders will be running for cover or fighting back, as their rocks are overturned.
This is “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” written over a certain WA iron ore magnate’s rise to wealth and goes on to coal in NSW or the usurpation of Crown Grounwater mineral rights by CSG’s casual pollution of unsealed aquifers that “Nobody Knows Exists”.
True, if you are in the Free for All US but very much different in NSW where Fifty staff Spent fifty years of publically funded effort to map the groundwater resources of NSW.
Those with an eye to these prizes, (80% of the freshwater in NSW big enough for you), cynically pretend that none of this knowledge was ever built up over that half century of effort.
FOI and the NBN will make all the difference to those “Water Futures” that Malcolm Turnbull was famously interested in as the former Fedeeral Minister.
2,500 Person/years of effort produced nothing?
Inside information, that’s the way it works?

By: Mike Smith

Mike Smith — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 04:13:21 +0000

And of course all requests must be submitted in valid SQL