Battle over secrecy

Press, 18 March 1977, Page 12

Battle over secrecy

By

OLIVER RIDDELL,

Wellington reporter

The investigation by the Office Solicitor of the Stale Services Commission (Mr D. J. Bradshaw) into the spate of leaks from the Forest Service is just another stage in the secret battle being waged between some Government departments and outside groups opposed to their policies over what should be “open” and what should be “secret." While the Forest Service is the department most obviously under fire at the moment, it is not the only one and its prominence may well be only temporary. The factors which have created the present situation with the Forest Service operate in many fields outside forestry management planning. The philosphy behind the present policy of Government departments over “open” and “secret” information was outlined in an interview given by the Minister of Forests (Mr V. S. Young) recently. As Minister of the department most affected, and as Minister for the Environment as well, he is the member of the Government most concerned at this stage. He said he had always followed »he simple principle that the public was entitled to any information which could be sought by question in Parliament; only commercial or persona! details might need to be kept cont dential. In the Parliamentary system. Government departments were responsible through- their heads to the Minister, who in turn was

responsible to Parliament, which in tum was responsible to the public, Mr Young said. Any system in which departments were not responsible to their Minister, such as occurred to some degree in Sweden, increased the power of the departments at the expense of Parliament. Also, if departments were to give unrestricted advice to their Ministers, this had to be kept confidential. Mr Young said that there needed to be uniformity between and within departments, and the boundaries should be defined so that public sen-ants could know what could be released and what could not. In his opinion, background papers should be available reasonably, but recommendations should only be published at the discretion of the Minister concerned. This outlines the philosophy behind the present governmental information system, and the system also makes provision for who may make statements and when. But in an instance when views conflict, such as over the management of the West Coast beech forests, there must always be a temptation for those within the Forest Service who disagree with their department’s philosophy to aid those outside who oppose that philosophy. An implied tenet of Mr Young’s system is that anyone within the department concerned has a better chance of changing a particular policy than someone

outside it, and that efforts to effect a change should be internal. But this overemphasises the importance of the individual cogs in the departmental machine, and their power to change anything. Also, the effectiveness of the Parliamentary system will depend on how iften Parliament meets, so that questions can be asked of the Minister, or how competent the other members of Parliament are to question or challenge what is being done. Doubts on these points have led, in part, to the whole system of pressure groups outside Parliament. On the other hand, the work of the Forest Service and other departments, and their efficiency and morale, are being undermined by the failure of the present system outlined by Mr Young, and by the willingness of individuals within the departments to go outside it. What is needed is not the appointment of solicitors, not the invoking of the Official Secrets Act by calling the police, but the establishment of rules by which civil servants can know what information can be released and what cannot — as Mr Young suggested. These rules will not be the whole answer, but they would take the pressure off the many sincere public servants who are torn between observing the letter of the law and the patent desiiability of telling the public as much as possible. This could only improve the morale and the efficiency of departments caught, to a greater or lesser extent, in the current conflict.