Two legal experts tasked with examining Tasmania’s Right to Information laws hope their work will lead to greater transparency. This review is the latest in a series focused on how public information is accessed, but this time, the public will have more of a say in the process.
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00:00Professors Tim McCormack and Rick Snell know how important access to information is in
00:08a functioning democracy.
00:10Heavy access to reliable, high quality information allows you to basically ask the government
00:17the right questions.
00:18Is this a good project?
00:20Is it on time?
00:21Is it on budget?
00:22They've been chosen to carry out a complete review of Tasmania's right to information
00:27system.
00:28The review has come about as part of a minority government agreement between Premier Jeremy
00:32Rockleaf and the independents formerly of the Jackie Lambie network.
00:36Terms of reference are quite broad actually to not only look at the legislative framework
00:42but how it works in practice.
00:44The system has undergone a range of recent reviews, each one finding serious shortcomings
00:49in how government agencies respond to requests for information to be released.
00:54But this time it will have broad public input.
00:56There's been critique about the culture has been a secret, closed approach to information
01:02handling rather than what's required by the Act, which is an open process.
01:06It will be the third report that's come out of the minority government agreement.
01:10The first, a review of the state's finances by Saul Eslake.
01:14The second, an assessment of the proposed Macquarie Point Stadium by economist Nicholas
01:19Gruen.
01:20Neither of these reports resulted in big changes to the government's position, but there's
01:24hope the third report will be different.
01:26It's up to the government and I'm hoping that we hit the right note and we work collaboratively
01:32with government agencies that we can achieve the outcome.
01:36We've made commitments to support a review of RTI laws, we'll be interested to hear what
01:41advice comes out from those, what recommendations that we can look at.
01:45The experts will report back to the government with recommendations by June.