An inquiry into the FOI laws has been told the Act is no longer fit for purpose and is struggling to keep up with the increasing number of requests.
Country News has tried to use the access laws to uncover documents relating to the culling of the Barmah brumbies.
It took about 18 months to gain access to some of the documents, as there were several time extensions sought by Parks Victoria and on appeal to the Information Commissioner.
The Information Commissioner, Sean Morrison, has combined oversight of freedom of information, privacy and information security, administering both the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy and Data Protection Act in Victoria.
Every year OVIC publishes a report on the operation of the FOI Act based on data reported to OVIC by Victorian Government agencies subject to the Act.
The latest year recorded the highest number of FOI requests ever made.
Of those requests, about 64 per cent were granted in full and 33 per cent in part, and three per cent were refused in full.
What this data demonstrates to OVIC is that Victoria’s FOI system is heavily reliant on people having to first make a request to the government to receive information and heavily reliant on agencies processing requests using the procedures under the FOI Act. This is what we call the ‘pull model’.
“OVIC’s view is that the FOI Act’s 1982 pull model is no longer fit for purpose and requires a complete overhaul,” Mr Morrison has told a parliamentary inquiry.
“The Act as currently drafted does not support a maximum amount of information being made available to the public in a timely and easy manner.
“The Act’s out-of-date provisions do not align with how modern government operates, and the legislative drafting is technical and complex, making it hard for the public to understand and for agencies and ministers to administer,” Mr Morrison told the parliamentary ethics committee inquiry into the effectiveness of the FOI legislation
“Tinkering around the edges of the FOI Act is not going to fix these issues. Victoria needs to replace the FOI Act with a modern, third-generation access-to-information law.”
Mr Morrison advocated for a ‘push’ model of access, meaning that departments actively publish documents rather than wait for a request.
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