Experts say government could improve transparency and accountability
Some experts say the Albanese government is failing to deliver on election promises of more transparency and accountability. Despite establishing a national anti-corruption commission, there are questions around its secrecy.
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00:00 Personally, my experience, my frustration with the government since Labor was elected
00:07 is over the Freedom of Information Act.
00:10 And we've seen some high profile cases of that.
00:13 So the Prime Minister's office is fighting both former Senator Rex Patrick and the Financial
00:19 Review over releasing his official diary.
00:24 I had quite a frustrating situation with the Defense Department for about 15 months.
00:31 I originally applied for a schedule of RAF special purpose flights.
00:37 Those are the flights that carry ministers and the Prime Minister all around the country
00:42 and all around the world.
00:43 I applied for that originally last August.
00:47 And so it's taken more than a year of fighting the Defense Department to finally release
00:51 that information.
00:53 That used to be information that was just tabled in Parliament every six months, but
00:58 that was stopped by the former Morrison government during the pandemic.
01:02 And the current government is arguing that secrecy, so to speak, should continue.
01:08 You hear a lot of things from the opposition, both sides when they're in opposition, say
01:15 some really nice things about changing the FOI Act and talking about transparency.
01:19 So Labor and opposition fought then Attorney General George Brandis for months and months
01:26 and months over the release of his official diary.
01:28 And they eventually won that case.
01:32 And Brandis was forced to release that.
01:35 So it's kind of ironic that they would do that in opposition, but then in government
01:39 be refusing to release the Prime Minister's diary.
01:41 So you know, when Labor was elected, I was trying not to be a cynic, right?
01:48 I was trying to think, well, they have actually spoken a lot about FOI, a lot about transparency.
01:53 They're putting the National Anti-Corruption Commission in place.
01:59 So perhaps they're going to approach FOI in a lot more transparent way.
02:03 That hasn't turned out to be the case yet.
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