Secrecy ... until after you voted
STATE departments continue to withhold documents from the Tasmanian public despite a government direction to deliver greater transparency.
The Justice Department has denied the Mercury access to public submissions made in response to tougher bail laws — more than three months after a new rule was supposed to come into force making all such documents available.
The Government last year committed to release all such submissions from January 1, but it has now emerged a three-month “transition period” was also in place — delaying the real implementation date of the reforms until after the state election on March 3.
STATE departments continue to withhold documents from the Tasmanian public despite a Government direction to deliver greater transparency.
The Justice Department has denied the Mercury access to public submissions made in response to tougher bail laws — more than three months after a new government rule was supposed to come into force making all such documents available.
The Government last year committed to release all submissions from consultation pe- riods on “major policy matters” from January 1 this year, unless the person making the submission specifically requested it not be made public.
But when the Mercury asked for the submissions made so far this year relating to the proposed changes to bail laws, the Justice Department refused — saying the Government had baked-in a threemonth “transition period” before the new rules took effect. That means that only submissions made post-April 1 — a month after the state election — will be released.
The Mercury has now been told a Right To Information request will need to be lodged to access the information.
A Justice spokesman said: “The three-month transition period was provided to ensure the department had time to implement an improved online public submission form and protocols to cater for the large number of bills and submissions handled by the department.”
The Premier’s spokesman said last night: “The Government expects departments to now be fully compliant with the policy for any requests for submissions made after April 1 this year.”
But lawyer Ben Bartl, a policy officer for Community Legal Centres Tasmania, which has made its submission opposing the proposed bail changes public, said there was no valid reason why government departments shouldn't do the same.
“It comes back to open government and transparency,” Mr Bartl said. “Given the Government has said that submissions provided by the Government will be made available, and given it's a major reform reversing the onus of proof, I would call on the Government to make those submissions provided by the departments available so the community is kept abreast of what people think.”
Right To Information expert and University of Tasmania associate professor of law Rick Snell says there is no valid reason for the threemonth transition period.
“I can't understand what the motivation would be for this three-month period for government agencies,” Professor Snell said. “The government agencies, you would assume, would be aware the policy was coming in. From that perspective, I can't understand why that's the case.”
The Government is proposing 15 changes to bail laws. They include a new test of “unacceptable risk” for bail applicants, and a presumption against bail in some instances.