Just about every journalist in Australia has their own FOI horror story.
While freedom of information laws are meant to provide access to government documents in the public interest, they are riddled with exemptions that allow political offices and departments to block release.
Cabinet-in-confidence, commercial-in-confidence, national security and, a perennial favourite, “practical refusal” — invoked when a request is deemed too resource-intensive — are regularly deployed.
Even when they know they’re in the wrong, agencies run down the clock, banking on the months (or years) it can take for a review by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to render the information stale.
Capital Brief’s story last week that revealed the number of outstanding traffic fines incurred by foreign embassies in Canberra took almost two years to extract from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
