A federal bid to make national cabinet deliberations exempt from freedom of information laws has been described by a constitutional law expert as bizarre, messy and disrespectful.
Senators are scrutinising a government push to legislate secrecy for deliberations between state, territory and federal leaders and make them exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
University of Sydney constitutional law expert Anne Twomey, who was speaking in a private capacity, blasted the attempt to change the law to impose cabinet confidentiality on the deliberations.
A judge previously rejected the government's assertion that the meetings, replacing the Council of Australian Governments during the COVID-19 pandemic, amounted to a committee of federal cabinet whose minutes were exempt from FOI requests.
"It's frankly bizarre legislation. I mean, why would you assert something that's not true, why would you say, in legislation, that a cat is a dog or vice versa," Professor Twomey told the finance and public administration committee on Monday.
"It's just a mess and it shows disrespect for the people, for the courts, everyone to go around, asserting in legislation things that aren't true.
"Really you've just got to ask yourself what's the government's aim here. If the aim is to keep certain information confidential, they can do that by just changing the FOI Act."
Geoffrey Watson SC saw transparency as being "crushed" under the coalition government.
He appeared at the inquiry in a private capacity after representing independent senator Rex Patrick in his legal challenge to access documents from national cabinet.
He argued the FOI Act had become "a tool of obstruction".
The Law Council of Australia's submission to the inquiry said existing FOI exemptions were enough to stop the disclosure of information where harm to national interests outweighed the public interest.
Should parliament decide some kind of "bespoke exemption" for national cabinet documents was necessary, the council proposed a sunset clause and five-year time limit for any information sealed.
"Accepting that there is merit in encouraging candid discussion in national cabinet, it is not apparent that secrecy needs to extend to the topics discussed or the information presented to that body," the council's submission said.
"That is because (unlike a true cabinet) national cabinet does not manage the budgets or policy agenda of a government and does not face the electorate every three to four years."
Labor and the Greens demanded Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Phil Gaetjens, the respondent in Senator Patrick's case, front the inquiry.
"Mr Gaetjens is the only person who has first-hand knowledge of the operations of national cabinet," Labor senator Tim Ayres said.
"Indeed he is a principal architect of the bill that has been put before the parliament."
