The federal government will not allow Australians to see the key instructions Scott Morrison has issued to his ministers, prompting criticism it is using cabinet “as a transparency shield”.
Prime ministers typically send a letter to each minister setting out overarching priorities and responsibilities in the portfolio – but the government has blocked a freedom of information request from Guardian Australia to access this correspondence. It says that is “standard practice”.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) said it had found relevant letters but had decided to refuse access – in full – because they were exempt under the cabinet documents rule.
The decision-maker – an assistant secretary in PM&C – said they were “satisfied that the requested documents have been submitted to cabinet for its consideration and were brought into existence for the dominant purpose of submission for consideration by the cabinet”.
Previous Australian governments have taken a similar approach not to release the letters, but it clashes with the practice of several other governments, including the Queensland state government, which proactively publishes charter letters for each minister.
Internationally, the Canadian government publishes all of the mandate letters to individual ministers, while the European Commission releases correspondence from the commission president to the appointed commissioners on their responsibilities.
Compounding the secrecy, a spokesperson for PM&C did not provide any detail when asked by Guardian Australia to specify the dates the letters were taken to cabinet.
“As is standard practice, charter letters are considered part of the cabinet process, and are not released publicly,” the spokesperson said in a one-sentence response to four questions.
The department also did not say whether the letters were submitted to the full cabinet or to a cabinet committee – and if the latter, which committee.
In a follow-up exchange, Guardian Australia asked whether the letters had been taken to cabinet before or after the FOI request was submitted. The PM&C spokesperson said: “This information is part of the cabinet process and is not released publicly.”
The independent senator Rex Patrick said the public had a right to know “what ministers are doing” and argued Morrison had been using cabinet “as a transparency shield for way too long”.
“The prime minister is taking opaqueness in government to an extreme level,” Patrick said. “The request for this information to be made public is not unreasonable. It’s only proper that Australians understand what ministers are being tasked with. This is a government who is afraid of any form of oversight. Transparency is to Scott Morrison as kryptonite is to Superman.”
Labor has previously labelled a cabinet committee with just one permanent member – Morrison – an “abuse of process” that enables the prime minister to call meetings protected by cabinet confidentiality, even if no other cabinet members are present.
Morrison last year defended the committee responsible for his policy “deep dives” and dismissed Labor concerns as “trivial Canberra politics”. He has also faced criticism for shielding from public view the documents of the Covid-era “national cabinet” that brings together state and territory leaders.
However, there is no suggestion that Morrison’s approach to charter letters is different from that of his predecessors.
In 2008, PM&C defended a refusal to release draft letters prepared by the Rudd government, saying details of government priorities were not disclosed “to maintain cabinet confidentiality”.
At the time, PM&C said the practice of writing to all ministers to outline priorities for their portfolios began with the Hawke government and continued through the Keating and Howard governments. But in 2007 – its final year of office – the Howard government “began using a cabinet process” rather than letters to communicate its priorities to ministers.
Guardian Australia wrote to PM&C on 9 March to seek access to all charter letters issued by Morrison to cabinet ministers, members of the outer ministry, and parliamentary secretaries since 18 December 2020 – the date of the previous frontbench reshuffle.
The request followed a report in the Australian newspaper that the assistant defence minister, Andrew Hastie, had yet to be issued with an official ministerial charter letter setting out his responsibilities.
The newspaper reported on 8 March that Hastie had instead been working from an informal list of duties assigned by Linda Reynolds, the then defence minister, who had been on leave at the time and has since been replaced by Peter Dutton.
As of now, the defence department’s website contains a short dot-point list of responsibilities for each minister and assistant minister in the portfolio, except Hastie, who was appointed to the role in December.
But the website features a dot-point list for Dutton, who was appointed only last month.
Guardian Australia sent questions to Hastie’s office and the defence department on Friday last week asking why there were still no portfolio responsibilities listed for him, and whether he was yet to receive a formal charter letter.
The questions have gone unanswered. Hastie, the former head of parliament’s powerful intelligence committee, appears to be taking an interest in cybersecurity, having issued public statements and conducting media interviews on the topic in recent weeks.
Patrick called on the government to improve government transparency by appointing a standalone freedom of information commissioner.
Reviews of FOI decisions are currently conducted by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), but in a letter to the attorney general, Michaelia Cash, Patrick cites ballooning requests for reviews and wait times as cause for a separate office.
Patrick – who is one of parliament’s most prolific FOI applicants – said he was “deeply concerned about the under-resourcing” of the OAIC, citing its estimate it would receive 1,622 requests for review in 2022-23, up from 1,066 last financial year, while its capacity to close cases remained stuck at 829 per year.
Amanda Stoker, the assistant minister to the attorney general, has previously said resourcing of the OAIC was something she was “prepared to work with [Patrick] on some more”.
“There is a tension between the policy work of the commission and the review work,” Stoker told a Senate estimates hearing in March.
“There’s always a tension between the amount of resources one wants and the limits that exist for us in the real world.”
A spokesman for Cash said the government is “committed to the effective operation of the FOI Act and ensuring it continues to meet its objectives”.
“The government continues to assess the operational requirements of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.”
