In the wake of Stuart Nash's unlawful withholding of official information to hide his corrupt disclosure to donors, there have been multiple calls for criminal penalties to be added to the OIA to deter such behaviour. Graeme Edgeler makes the case well in The Spinoff, Newsroom interviews a bunch of experts who are all united on it, and even ACT has got into the game. And so they should. 72 countries have such laws, and we are weird for not having them - especially when we clearly have a problem with wilful hiding of information.
To help things along, I've taken a first stab at a bill on the Progressive Bills Project wiki. The bill is based on Canadian and South African law, and provides for a penalty of two years imprisonment for destroying, damaging, altering, concealing, or falsifying records, or directing, counsel or procuring someone to do the same. There's some policy questions that I'm not sure about: should it refer to "records" or "information" (the OIA is unusual in covering the latter)? Should prosecution require the permission of the Attorney-General, as is required for wrongful disclosure and corrupt use offences? Should it just be in the Crimes Act and cover LGOIMA as well, or should LGOIMA have its own clause? But I think there's enough there for someone to pick it up and put it in the ballot, and for it to be improved by a select committee. So, how about it? Any MP's keen?
