Information Bill doubts

Press, 19 October 1982, Page 37

Information Bill doubts

Parliamentary reporter The Official Information Bill, intended to make official information easier to get, might still penalise those wanting information quickly. Mr D. F. Caygill (Lab., St Albans) told social science researchers. Officials administering the United States Freedom of Information Act told him that they aimed to answer each inquiry within a year, he said. The procedures had become sufficiently complex that people had set themselves up as freedom of information specialists. The Official Information Bill is still being considered by a Parliamentary select I committee, and is intended

to be of use. among journalists. and others. He would not be surprised to find that, as in America, the New Zealand bill would be little used by journalists who wanted ’ information quickly. Mr Caygill said that local government was not brought under the bill’s requirements, and that the bill's effectiveness depended in the end on the Government’s willingness to yield information. There was little evidence of this commitment yet, he said. The Air New ZealandNational Airways Corporation merger report was suppressed; a call by the Geological Society to the Gov-

ernment to reveal the reasons for the choice of oil drilling sites was ignored, and the Native Forests Action Council and Environmental groups had had little success in eliciting information from the Forest Service. Mr Caygill said the commercial secrecy provisions of the ill would invite some organisations to make exaggerated claims to confidentiality, when they were in no danger from competition. The price to be paid to the Natural Gas Corporation for gas used in ammonia urea manufacture was being kept secret although there was no competitor in ammonia urea manufacture, he said.