Ministers to lose veto power to Cabinet

Press, 14 June 1986, Page 26

Ministers to lose veto power to Cabinet

PA Wellington The Ministerial veto will be removed from the Official Information Act and replaced with a collective Cabinet decision. Introducing the Official Information Amendment Bill in Parliament, the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, said the Ministerial veto was the fundamental weakness of the original act. Clause 15 of the bill provides that the overriding of an Ombudsman’s recommendation will have to be by Order-in-Council. “It will be a collective decision of cabinet, not the decision of an individual Minister,” Mr Palmer said. “The Order-in-Council will have to be published in the Gazette and laid before Parliament.”

The amending legislation also extends the scope of the act and prevents convicted criminals from obtaining access to police prosecution files. A person whose request for information has been declined will be able to seek judicial review of the making of the Order-in-Council. The bill brings hospital boards, education boards and universities within the umbrella of the act. Mr Palmer said the legislation would ensure confidential information which an organisation was compelled to supply to the state could be protected. “But the presumption of confidentiality can be overridden by considerations of public interest,” he said. Mr Palmer said the

Government wanted to extend the principles of the Act to local government and intended to introduce further amending legislation during its term. However, the Opposition’s spokesman on official information, Mr J. K. McLay (Birkenhead), said the new veto did not amount to any substantial change. “At the end of the day, there is no change of real substance,” he said. “Because, what will happen under this particular procedure is that a Minister will take to Cabinet a proposal that a particular release of information be vetoed, this time by Cabinet” The bill was introduced and referred to the Justice and Law Reform Select Committee.