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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

A reasonable period of cabinet secrecy.

Just on that 30 year rule which keeps Federal cabinet documents out of the public domain for longer than good governance requires, The Independent speculated over the weekend that the UK inquiry into the situation there is likely to result in a recommendation that it be reduced to 15 years. The report is to be released later this month.Hopefully food for thought for our policy makers. The Governance group at the 2020 Summit earlier this year apparently was thinking of recommending 10 years until Minister Faulkner entered the discussion resulting in a recommendation of 15 years. As I mentioned in the original post some state legislation gives most documents that could be described as cabinet documents exempt status under freedom of information laws for a shorter period than 30 years. In Queensland the last state to re-examine the issue the Government opted for 20 years despite the Solomon review recommending 10.

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