Mr PALLAS (Tarneit) — It gives me  great  pleasure but also a  great deal of sadness to rise to speak  on  this  bill,  because I think this is  a  piece  of legislation that falls far  short of the rhetoric that actually accommodates and accompanies it. This is  a bill that falls far short of the aspirations  and the expectations that were contained in  the second-reading speech and indeed in the policies that underpin it, which were put forward by the now  government when in opposition. It is not a toothless tiger.

It  is, I would say, in many  ways  a  bill that is quite cynically drafted  and aimed  at  ensuring that  there  is  the outward  veneer  of  respectability and accountability; however, there is a malevolent and, as the member for Altona has said,  a  mendacious  effort  by  this  government  to  ensure  that freedom  of information becomes freedom from information.

The freedom of information proposed under this regime will fall far short of the somewhat idealistic views expressed in this place on 7 December 1999 by the then new member for Hawthorn. He said:

  People need to conduct themselves in good faith,  with  trust  and with common  sense. Freedom of information should be a matter of saying, ‘Ask and you shall  receive’.  Freedom  of  information  has  a long way to evolve on  matters  of  timeliness,   comprehensiveness,  mandatory  publication  and  even   internet  publication.

Those were the words of a wide-eyed idealist, a man who clearly had not realised that one day he would become Premier of the state and his ideals would be tested in the most bitter of all crucibles  — the exercise of power.  What happened to that idealism? What happened  to the coalition which said it believed in freedom of information as an ideal to aspire to,  something the  community deserved as a right? What we saw was a Machiavellian manipulation of legislation.

This is a rancid bill, hiding the  arrogant  and  rotten culture of born-to-rule belligerence in the government. There is no doe-eyed idealism in  the  bill.  It simply enables a government to  say, ‘We  will take any document that the public inquires after and hide it in a ministerial office, a private office. We can put a stamp on  it’.  The Attorney-General likes to stamp his press releases ‘Policy delivered’ as if  they are in some way papal  writ, as if the stamp  and the ink deliver real benefit to the people of Victoria.

These  are  just  words  from  a  government  that believes in nothing more than language subsuming action  and right being  subsumed  by movement, a  government that has no conception of its own moral compass  when it  comes to  implementing its policies.

The doe-eyed idealist,  upon first walking into Parliament in 1999, said that it should simply be  a  question of ‘ask and  you shall receive’. If that  were the case, we would not have this nonsense.  We would not have a  process whereby the freedom of  information commissioner will  not  be appointed by  the Governor in Council but  effectively by the Parliament, and not on a tenured appointment but for a set period of time with the capacity for reappointment.

Ministerial officers can pull documents requested  under  freedom of information into ministerial offices — it is not just ministers or ministerial advisers; it can be the office.

Those  opposite railed mercilessly  against the idea of  the unelected swill  in ministerial offices —  those  hundreds of ministerial advisers unaccountable to anybody —  but now  they are  employing them in large and growing numbers,  the same people — —

  Mr Clark interjected.

  Mr PALLAS— No, we will see. We hear from the Attorney-General — —

  The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Weller) — Order! The member for Tarneit  knows that it is improper to respond to interjections.

  Mr PALLAS— I am sorry, Acting Speaker. I love to incorporate the language of the Attorney-General into the  record  sometimes so the community can see what a sham and a fraud this government has become.

Members  of the government  shroud themselves in the respectability of language, saying they genuinely believe in  freedom of information. They  rail against the imagined atrocities of the past and they use them as  justification in their own minds.  It  is the respectability they clothe themselves in at night  when  they rationalise away what is  nothing short of rancid hypocrisy in this  legislation — a bill aimed at avoiding scrutiny and denying  the community’s right to know. The government has turned this into an art form, but it will be held accountable because people are not stupid.

Despite the fact that this government has been in power for less than 14 months, despite the fact that the government  has  continued to outwardly extol a belief in  freedom of information and transparency — no  matter  how  cynical  it  may appear in  terms of the way  it  describes it — everything  it  does behind the scenes,  every  measure  it  puts  in  place,  is  malevolent,   mendacious  and Machiavellian. It is about avoiding scrutiny.

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We need  to be aware that  this is a bitter and  small-minded government that is putting in place a piece of legislation that demeans this Parliament. Government members cannot shroud themselves in respectability through  the language that is contained in the second-reading speech or indeed their own government’s policy.

I  am  the  first  to  acknowledge  that  all governments fall  short  of  their aspirations in terms of what should be delivered to the community. We all should fall short, because  if one  does not  aim high,  one will invariably shoot low. Governments  should  aim high.  But  this  government is  not  aiming high. This government is just  telling people that it aims high, that it aspires to lift us out of the mire to look  towards  the  stars of a community that  can  seek  the opportunity to see and acquire  information, where community members are given a real appreciation of what goes on within government and what rights they have as individuals to scrutinise information and engage in a public debate.

Once we are in control  of the executive arm of government we all recognise  the obligations of those executive responsibilities, but we should never give way to our basest  sentiments and  our fear  of the right of the  public to  scrutinise government.  If we do, every time we do  we relinquish a little bit more of  our own  integrity  and,  ultimately,  a little bit more of the community’s right to genuinely scrutinise us.

This is a government that has  effectively fallen  short of its language and its aspirations. I do not know whether this is a purely Machiavellian undertaking or whether this is a  government that genuinely  does not appreciate the  practical consequences of what it is doing. Unfortunately I think it is the former not the latter.  The government  has  put  in  place  a  system  under  which  it  has a centralised  ministerial  adviser,  a  man  whose  name,  Don  Colson,  has been mentioned in this place a number of times.

He  brings  FOI requests in  from all departments, scrutinises  them, delays the process  and  ultimately  puts  down  the  right  of  the community to know. The integrity  of  a  legislative  scheme  becomes  increasingly  opaque  as  it  is controlled  within  the  hands  and  the  confines  of  the  unelected  and  the non-scrutinisable.

This piece  of  proposed legislation is a  joke.  It is a joke  because while it aspires to one thing in its language, it delivers entirely the  opposite. People have  a right to access material  from government, they have a right to be angry with  government  and they  also  have  a right  to  recognise that  governments sometimes do not live up to their expectations. We have all seen that. But Labor has a proud  history  of introducing freedom  of  information and  of  reforming freedom of information, and  any  time that we fell  short  of the mark  it  was because we aimed higher and higher every time. Those opposite  who  believe that we fell short should not seek to do better by aiming lower.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.