Highway 1, Australia by Tony Bowden, used with thanks under Creative Commons
Is it safe for your children to swim in the river? How much did your council spend on that fancy new mobile app? Will we be building better public transport? How much graffiti is being reported in your area? What really happened to those stranded whales you heard about?
Australia’s state and local governments create and hold some of the most vital information on your behalf and you have the right to access it. As you can see in the requests above you can use Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to open this government information and answer important questions that help you, your family, and your community.
Now you can use Right To Know to make these requests to any state authority and local government in Australia.
From day one we imagined a single site where you can request information from any government authority in Australia. Today—on International Right To Know Day no less—that becomes a reality.
If you want answers, use your right to know and make a request.
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
One Comment
Australian FoI is utterly broken: The *only* pubic servants permitted to respond to FoI requests are lawyers, and it is a moral and ethical requirement of their profession to act on behalf of their client (government), which is a direct conflict of interest when it comes to the revelation of embarrassing information, misconduct, or anything illegal – which is frequently the purpose of FoI requests.
There are no penalties or repercussions for public servants who simply lie, or otherwise break rules. Many of the FoI requests I’ve made receive blatant lies in response, and almost all of them receive substantial subtle dishonesty (e.g. pretending that requests will be hard, and refusing, deliberately misconstruing requests, responding with piles of obviously irrelevant junk, and so on). The waiting list for review is at least 5 years long at this point (I’m still in the middle of the process), and the government keeps cutting back on the OAIC budget to exacerbate things. The OAIC themselves are firmly on the side of government, and exhibit multiple corrupt behaviours of their own (such as (real example) refusing to reveal their own investigations the support their decisions, even when the original investigation clearly and specifically instructs that it is to be released to me). If you tell the OAIC they’re corrupt, they tell you they are not, but they also refuse to accept evidence of corruption when you ask to send it to them !!
If you’re planning on using the FoI system to expose government corruption or ineptitude: be aware that their systems to prevent that coming our are WELL OILED.
…and don’t get me STARTED on the whitewash disgustingness that’s called a “Senate Inquiry” !! (Or even a “Royal Commission” for that matter – the proceedings of which have just been ruled inadmissible-as-evidence by our supreme court: at least *someone* recognises how unreliable and corrupt all that material actually is!)