Subverting Democracy

That's what several Ministers and government departments are doing, according to the Ombudsmen's office. In their annual report [PDF], the criticise Ministers for failing to meet requests in a timely fashion or properly balance public interest considerations against their excuses for withholding information. They also note that

Sometimes reasons for withholding information are advanced which seem to relate more to political or administrative convenience than to legitimate withholding grounds under the OIA. We feel that holders of official information need to be reminded that by denying citizens access to information they are in fact denying those same citizens their right to participate in the democratic process.

In other words, the fact that information would make the government or Minister look bad is not a reason for withholding it. In fact, that's arguably the whole point of the Act - to allow the public (and the media, political parties and interest groups) to hold the government to account.

Reading further, the Ombudsmen identify specific problems with misuse of the "confidentiality of free and frank advice" clause, partly caused by the proliferation of party political advisers in Ministerial offices. They also identify a general failure to consider the public interest in refusing requests. As they point out, the reasons given in section 9(2) of the Act are not conclusive, and must be balanced against the public interest in its widest sense (including the public interest in access to information in general). This is a clear reference to the government's attempt to suppress the costings of their student loan policy in the run-up to the election.

While the Ombudsmen are too polite to name names, looking at their table of Ministers with more than 15 complaints (at the top of p26), it's fairly clear who the worst culprits are: David Benson-Pope, Steve Maharey, and Trevor Mallard. It will be interesting to see whether they take their attitudes with them into their new ministries.

Finally, the Dominion-Post's version of the story has this little note:

A study by Victoria University fellow in law and journalism Steven Price, to be published this month, found that in two-thirds of cases where ministers withheld information, they "failed to explicitly balance public interest considerations, and, when they did, they rarely provided more than lip service".

I look forward to seeing this...