THE PRESS FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1986. Local body information

Press, 13 June 1986, Page 16

THE PRESS FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1986. Local body information

The Government’s announcement that legislation will be introduced to Parliament later this year, with the intention of applying the principles of the Official Information Act to local bodies, is a worth-while extension of the principles of open government. It may be, however, that practical considerations so complicate matters that an easy parallel will not be possible between obtaining information from Government departments and local bodies. As an example, there is no obvious analogy in local body administration for the Ministerial veto that exists under the Official Information Act.

Local bodies were not included in the provisions of the Official Information Act when it was passed in 1982, because the act evolved from a review of the Official Secrets Act, which applied only to central Government. Very good reasons exist to require a similar degree of disclosure of official information held by local bodies. Many people are more intimately affected, or more personally afflicted, by the workings of their local councils and ad hoc boards than they are by the Government’s management of the affairs of the country generally.

The large amount of work generated for the Ombudsman’s Office by people with a gripe against their local councils, or wanting to know more about the intentions of a local authority, is evidence of the level of concern in communities about the way local government affects everyday life. As the work of the Ombudsman’s Office has shown, fears can be dispelled and misunderstandings rectified in a large proportion of instances simply by opening the lines of communication and making available information on council files.

In the experience of the Ombudsman’s Office, however, the formal application of statutory requirements to disclose information, unless special circumstances prevail, is not without pitfalls. It has always been an important part of the function of the Ombudsman to get information that would not otherwise be available to a complainant. In many instances, a request for official information under the Official Information Act has been incidental to a complaint that could be investigated legitimately and more

effectively under the Ombudsman Act. On occasion, specific provisions of the Official Information Act would prevent disclosure of information that can be obtained by the Ombudsman’s Office in the normal course of events.

By the same token, about a third of all requests for review by the Ombudsman’s Office under the Official Information Act are resolved to the satisfaction of the complainant without the need to proceed to a formal recommendation for release; in other words, the affair is settled by the normal process of discussion between the Ombudsman’s Office and the Government agency concerned. This same, common-sense approach no doubt will apply with equal ease to requests for information from local bodies; but it is clear that the actual machinery set down by the proposed law will have to be thought out carefully lest the letter of the law inadvertently reduces the ability of people to get the information they seek.

Over the years, the business of local bodies has become progressively more open to public gaze. Not many years ago the meetings of council committees were not open to the public and the statutory requirements for reporting the financial affairs of local bodies were satisfied by a handful of totals and transfers that gave no real indication of what was being done. These things have changed; and they are still changing. If they are interested, people can learn much more now about what their local authority is doing than they could 10 or 20 years ago. The proposed legislation will extend this right to know even further.

An equally important change will be a rewording of the Public Bodies Meetings Act to prevent unwarranted use of the provision that allows local bodies to exclude the public from meetings or parts of meetings. The Government intends that its Local Government Official Information and Meetings Bill shall answer this requirement. The reaction of local bodies to the bill will be interesting, particularly the reaction of those local bodies whose easy recourse to the exclusion of the public prompted the call for change.