Hawke review submissions

Finally sent my submission off to the Hawke FOI review on Monday morning.  

AG's have picked this time to revamp their website so previous links to the review don't work, producing a 404 Not Found. 

The relevant page and the handful of submissions published so far is here. (A search for Dr Allan Hawke  and FOI Review takes you nowhere at present.) 

Of interest in newer submissions- Jeremy Tager recounts resistance to use of the act for public purposes in an attempt to access environmental information; the three parliamentary departments call for urgent clarification by the Parliament itself of the application of the FOI act to information held by them, and for the scope to be limited to documents of an administrative nature; the Inspector General Intelligence and Security wants changes to a requirement for that office to provide evidence regarding national security related matters to the OAIC and the AAT in order to limit waste of her time; and the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society wants scientists and their work protected from fishing expeditions and from those prying into the peer review process.

Not published by AG's yet, but you can down load a copy of my 20 page submission from The Box. A ramble on impediments in the law and in implementation and a whole lot of question marks about culture, outcomes and results, efficiencies or the opposite, that those of us on the outside don't/can't know about, but Dr Hawke should look into. Talk about bonus christmas reading! 

The submission from the Office of Australian Information Commissioner runs to 91 pages and 30 recommendations. Others out there on the web include a submission from The Greens Senator Rhiannon. And Rick Snell was busy-three submissions here.

There are plenty of weighty issues in these and likely, in other submissions yet to be sighted, that would benefit from more than a one on one chat with Dr Hawke - which seems to be the consultation modus operandi planned for the new year.

Six months-now four-for all this is likely to mean many important issues and good ideas will struggle for attention, or enhancement.