Names of "no gong, thanks" crowd unlikely to surface in Australia

Dahl-Charlie and the Chocolate..

Lewis-Narnia and all that..

Thanks to reader Andrew for drawing attention to the release in the UK, in response to a Freedom of Information application by the BBC, of the names of those who  declined a Queen's honour between 1951 and 1999, and who have since died-Roald Dahl and CS Lewis for two. "Until now, the information was so secret it was not included in official papers released under the 30-year rule," according to the BBC.

None of the 277 people on the list (pdf courtesy of BBC) are identifiable Australians-Imperial honours were the go until the Whitlam government abolished them and created the Order of Australia in 1975-although the request may have been limited to British names.

What's the likely story here?

Documents concerning consideration of names for submission for Imperial awards, up to 1974, and the later records held by the Office of the Governor General concerning the Council of the Order of Australia, the first of which are now 37 years old, in theory, should be well into open access (now after 20 not 30 years) and available from National Archives Australia. However unlike the UK, where personal information protections in the FOI act relate only to information concerning "a living individual," there is a hurdle: our archives act (s 33(1)(g)) qualifies the right to access through a provision that protects "information or matter the disclosure of which .. would involve the unreasonable disclosure of information relating to the personal affairs of any person (including a deceased person.)"

I don't know whether anyone has had a crack at this. Or sought records still held by the Office of the Governor General under the Freedom of Information Act. On the latter, probably not, given that the current battle over whether guidelines for awards are documents of "an administrative nature" subject to the act seems to be a first. A second hurdle once over the first would be whether the FOI act personal privacy conditional exemption s 47F applies. 

Two significant differences to the Archives Act: the FOI definition of personal information makes no reference to a person as living or deceased. And section 47F includes an additional public interest test, not found in archives legislation (don't ask me!). I'd expect disclosure under FOI of names of those who declined an award would be unreasonable in the absence of consent (where practicable, from next of kin in the case of a deceased person) and in any event that public interest considerations in favour of release would not be strong.

But otherwise idle researchers out there, your time starts now!