The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has spent more than $70,000 fighting legal battles to prevent the release of information under freedom of information (FoI) laws.
Responses to questions from Senate estimates in October 2015 have revealed the prime minister’s department has faced a slew of complaints over FoI handling and that it has apologised to 12 applicants since January 2014.
The responses show that two separate legal challenges to decisions made by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner have cost the department $15,994 in legal advice and $54,633 conducting appeals in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The responses to Senate questions did not include the outcome of the legal challenges.
The apologies were made after the department breached FoI laws, usually in relation to timeframes for processing requests.
“Based on an examination of the department’s FoI decisions since 1 January 2014, the department has apologised or expressed regret on 12 occasions to FoI applicants,” the department wrote.
Complaints about the department have also been lodged with the commonwealth ombudsman.
“From 1 January 2015 to 19 October 2015, three complaints have been made to the commonwealth ombudsman from two FoI applicants,” the department wrote. “All three complaints concerned the length of time to notify decisions.
“Two of the three complaints were finalised by the commonwealth ombudsman with no further action required from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and one is still under way.”
The department said staff had been reminded about how to deal with requests in a timely way.
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said timely responses were important to maintaining the integrity of the FoI Act and for transparency in government. “It is disappointing that there have been significant delays in answering freedom of information requests in the prime minister’s own department,” he said.
The federal government has faced criticism for its attitude towards freedom of information laws. In 2014 the government announced plans to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. It has failed to gain support from Labor and other crossbench senators to abolish the office, and it has remained in a state of limbo.
Only one of the three statutory positions – privacy, freedom of information and Australian information commissioner – is now occupied. The privacy commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, has been appointed acting information commissioner for successive three-month stints.
