PM Howard and his party pledged open government before being initially elected in 1996.
The facts, as revealed in a report released today, point to the very opposite. It seems like every opportunity to afford access to or information about government activity has been stifled - with sometimes bizarre reasoning to justify decision. It is fairly clear that the average citizen has little hope in getting access to information which ought to be readily available - and not at a prohibitive cost.
It ought to be of the gravest concern to all Australian citizens that their government has taken such a restrictive attitude and view on allowing ready FOI. Each party at the upcoming election should be challenged to reveal their policy on FOI.
The SMH reports in "Free Speech Report shock":
"More than 500 separate legal provisions in 335 different state and federal acts of Parliament are denying Australians access to a vast amount of information they should be able to see, a major new report says.
The Right to Know Coalition today released an audit on the state of free speech, which its authors say provides a damning picture of "how free speech and media freedom are being whittled away".
The report says acts of Parliament - including the NSW Gaming Machines Act, the Port Statistics Act, the Grain Marketing Act and the Food Act - all contained secrecy provisions preventing the release of information that should be in the public domain.
The coalition, made up of all the major media groups including Fairfax Media, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald, produced the report as a first step in lobbying government to change laws that deny the media and the public access to information often available overseas.
Former NSW Ombudsman Irene Moss led the team that wrote the report. When she began work, she wondered whether media complaints about secrecy and unworkable Freedom of Information laws might be "a bit of a beat-up".
She soon changed her mind and concluded "the audit's research and observations should ring alarm bells for those who value free speech".
She said that, as well as secrecy provision in laws, the audit found courts had imposed more than 1000 court suppression orders and there were mountains of evidence that Freedom of Information (FoI) laws posed major hurdles for journalists trying to report on government."
The facts, as revealed in a report released today, point to the very opposite. It seems like every opportunity to afford access to or information about government activity has been stifled - with sometimes bizarre reasoning to justify decision. It is fairly clear that the average citizen has little hope in getting access to information which ought to be readily available - and not at a prohibitive cost.
It ought to be of the gravest concern to all Australian citizens that their government has taken such a restrictive attitude and view on allowing ready FOI. Each party at the upcoming election should be challenged to reveal their policy on FOI.
The SMH reports in "Free Speech Report shock":
"More than 500 separate legal provisions in 335 different state and federal acts of Parliament are denying Australians access to a vast amount of information they should be able to see, a major new report says.
The Right to Know Coalition today released an audit on the state of free speech, which its authors say provides a damning picture of "how free speech and media freedom are being whittled away".
The report says acts of Parliament - including the NSW Gaming Machines Act, the Port Statistics Act, the Grain Marketing Act and the Food Act - all contained secrecy provisions preventing the release of information that should be in the public domain.
The coalition, made up of all the major media groups including Fairfax Media, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald, produced the report as a first step in lobbying government to change laws that deny the media and the public access to information often available overseas.
Former NSW Ombudsman Irene Moss led the team that wrote the report. When she began work, she wondered whether media complaints about secrecy and unworkable Freedom of Information laws might be "a bit of a beat-up".
She soon changed her mind and concluded "the audit's research and observations should ring alarm bells for those who value free speech".
She said that, as well as secrecy provision in laws, the audit found courts had imposed more than 1000 court suppression orders and there were mountains of evidence that Freedom of Information (FoI) laws posed major hurdles for journalists trying to report on government."
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