FOI awareness and alphabet soup

Twenty eight years on since our first law arrived, and even among the 400 interested enough to show up on a wet Saturday in Sydney to a discussion on Press Freedom and the Public Right to Know, its still a puzzle.


Before the session started at the Sydney Writers' Festival on Saturday I was amused to hear two people sitting behind me puzzling over the meaning of the program description of Michael McKinnon as "FOI Editor, Seven Network." One suggested it was probably a misprint of Folio Editor, whatever that meant. Mike Carlton in introducing the panel cleared that mystery up. More lie ahead with new acronyms RTI, GIPA and who knows what might still come in jurisdictions beyond NSW and Queensland.