South Australian access to cabinet documents 'almost impossible'

The Australian: Monday, June 04, 2012.

THE South Australian Labor government is failing in its promise to release state cabinet documents after 10 years, with access almost impossible, the Liberal opposition says.

Despite claims that the government would be more open and accountable under Premier Jay Weatherill than his predecessor Mike Rann, media outlets have had to apply under Freedom of Information regulations for documents that should now be publicly available.

The Australian applied for access to 36 documents in January and, of those, the first three were made available only last week, with one refused.

In a 2010 election promise, Labor vowed to make cabinet-in-confidence documents available after 10 years.

Opposition frontbencher Rob Lucas said the plan to make the documents available was typical of the government's "overblown and overhyped" promises, which had not materialised.

"Its supposed transparency and accountability was on the basis that the government referred to the 10-year provision and tried to compare it to the 30-year provisions (used in the past and for federal documents)," Mr Lucas said.

"What they believed they were doing was the same as the federal process but bringing it forward 20 years. The process that's there now is nothing like the 30-year process, it is not complete transparency or the complete openness that was promised."

A spokeswoman for the Premier's Department accepted that the 10-year timeframe had its issues, and said some of the documents still held commercially sensitive information.

"The Premier's decision at the time was to lift the exemption attached to cabinet documents; they are still subject to other exemptions and therefore cannot be released automatically as they are under the 30-year rule," she said.

She said rather than automatically releasing them, FOI officers judged whether the articles should be accessible.

The second document released during the week to The Australian related to a $30,000 grant towards a trust for British child migrants and a plaque. It arrived on May 29, almost six months late.

The third document, which arrived on Friday, detailed the former Liberal government's decision to close its Beijing trade office. The deal saved the government $500,000 and allowed it to open a $1.2 million trade office in the US.

The Australian applied for 30 documents under the same process in January last year. Six of them are still outstanding.

The FOI team has received 665 requests since 2010 and responded to 503.