Who, can we say, is asking

Here we were thinking that when individuals or organisations are going through a formal process of public submission, the rest of us are entitled to have an idea of who’s doing the talking.

You’d think a minimum requirement of those making public submissions on a publicly contentious project regarding use of public land would be that they do so . . . what’s the word we’re grasping for here? . . . publicly.

DOC would seem to regard this as all sorts of simplistic. Submitters, it says flatly, have a right to privacy. Who knew? Here we were thinking that when individuals or organisations are going through a formal process of public submission, the rest of us are entitled to have an idea of who’s doing the talking.

Not so, in the case of the 153, whomsoever they may be, who are trying to influence the outcome of a controversial proposal for a major new accommodation project half way between

Te Anau and Milford Sound.

The decision-makers will know who’s who but any stickybeaking interwebbers – potentially submitters – are being told only what arguments are wafting around the consultational atmosphere. Not who’s behind them, or what companies or interest groups they represent.

DOC seems be puzzled by a sense of media ingratitude, pointing out it’s not required to put any information on the internet and that it’s only doing so in pursuit of better transparency.

You heard that right. Because, see, under the old system, all submissions – and sometimes only a summary of them – would be published on DOC’s website only after a decision was made.

How much better, the department suggests, that what is being said is to be available early in the process?

‘‘Remember,’’ says acting planning, permissions and land director Andrew Baucke, sagely, ‘‘the important thing about submissions is what’s being said about the issue, not who said it.’’

Now that would be a memo that needs to circulate around the corridors of New Zealand’s planning tribunals, courts, even Parliament, for their own broad edification.

(Not that Baucke need feel pressured put his name on it, presumably. What matters is the idea.)

Baucke points out that under the Privacy Act and the Official Information Act, the department is required to balance requests for information with an obligation to protect the privacy of individuals.

Sure. But only when individuals have reasonable expectations of privacy. Which, in this case, you’d think they wouldn’t.

If not because these people might themselves value the idea of open democracy, then at very least because the submission forms they each filled in do actually point out that their names would be available to media and the public.

As for why this hasn’t actually happened, it’s a bit like a game of Simon Says. The forms cautioned that the information would be public but didn’t specifically state that this involved going on DOC’s website. So the department feels that doesn’t count as fair warning that they might be contacted by other submitters, affected parties or the media.

So in future the internet exposure will be spelt out as a risk – sorry, transparency consequence – and submitters will be given the option of at least having their contact details removed.

This all amounts to a case where not just a consultational blip, but a departmental mindset, needs fixing.