Attorney-General George Brandis went to great length in the short Senate estimates hearing yesterday to explain how FOI is entirely independent from him.
“If an FOI request were made of me, it’s not up to me to be the decision-maker. Nor would it be appropriate for me to influence the decision-maker. The decision-maker is a separate, designated person, and that separate designated person acts according to certain statutory criteria which are set out in the act.”
In Crikey‘s FOI request to the Attorney-General, the decision-maker was his chief of staff, Paul O’Sullivan, as is standard for FOI requests to ministers. While we are sure O’Sullivan did his utmost to adhere to the act, can the chief of staff really ever be completely independent from his boss?
Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.