Faith no more after City of Newcastle stonewalling on…

Faith no more after City of Newcastle stonewalling on ratepayer-funded report

FOLLOW THE LEADER: Legendary former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke said information about government operations was a "public right".

TRANSPARENCY should be the first and last rule of government, said former Australian prime minister, the late Bob Hawke.

"Information about government operations is not, after all, some kind of favour to be bestowed by a benevolent government or to be extorted from a reluctant bureaucracy," he said in the first weeks of his leadership. "It is, quite simply, a public right."

It's a shame City of Newcastle and the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment don't agree.

When the Newcastle Herald submitted a Government Information Public Access (GIPA) request for a consultant's report detailing possible long-term solutions for Stockton beach, it seemed like a pretty straightforward request.

We asked for a consultant's report, paid for with ratepayers' money, looking at a beach. We're not talking state secrets here.

Unfortunately, the test applied by both levels of government in refusing our requests was not one of public interest, rather simply one of political self-interest.

We know government secrecy is destructive - it covers up poor decision making, can promote corruption and in many cases is simply a misuse of power.

For this reason, we must challenge secrecy.

That is exactly what the Newcastle Herald has done. This week we appealed both refusals to the Privacy and Information Commissioner NSW. Unfortunately it's a process that takes time.

A reality that the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and City of Newcastle are all too well aware of.

Enough time for Stockton's Coastal Management Program public exhibition to be completed and for the plan to be submitted by City of Newcastle for approval to the NSW government.

Meaning that when the public had its chance to have a say, it never got to fully understand what investigations took place behind the scenes, or view what its money was spent on.

Welcome to a world where governments and government agencies simply do what they like, immune from questioning, cloaked in secrecy, with the people they govern forced to cop it, whether you know it or not.

In the face of increasing attempts to suppress information, the Newcastle Herald was one of many news outlets last year to join the Your Right to Know campaign to defend growing threats to press freedom.

Uncovering issues on behalf of the public's need for information is the point of the campaign. Like Bob Hawke, we believe transparency is, by and large, a desirable outcome.

Not only does it ensure proper scrutiny, but it may well help to dispel lingering disquiet about misuse of power and address concerns about the way governments use our money.

Unfortunately this example, about a simple consultant's report looking at Stockton beach, highlights significant problems with the way the public service is responding to its obligations under the GIPA Act in NSW.

If the powers that be think it's alright to hide this report from you, what else are they hiding?

More of our reporting on Stockton Beach

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