Saturday, October 18, 2014

Annette King on OIA abuse: "...growing arrogance by this government..."

 Radio NZ reported during the week:

Prime Minister John Key has admitted the Government sometimes delays releasing official information right up to the deadline if it is in its best interest to do so.
Up to the deadline, well beyond and sometimes to infinity.

I've blogged several times about this problem and my complaint to the Ombudsman. Eventually I received the following advice:


You may also be interested to know that the Chief Ombudsman is intending to conduct a wider administrative investigation into concerns that the broader public sector is not managing requests for information under the OIA as well as it should.
 
That's indicative of the pervasiveness of the problem.

Now the argument has developed into a 'all governments do it so it's OK' defence. That was ex National Party President Michelle Boag's justification on RadioLive yesterday.

Back to the RNZ report:

Labour's acting deputy leader, Annette King, said Mr Key's comments were disturbing.
"There's been a growing arrogance by this Government that they can do exactly what they like with official information... it borders on trying to undermine a fundamental tenet of democracy," she said.
She's got a point. My OIA requests go back to 2002 and I've never experienced delays (and sometimes refusals to release) to this extent before.




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

pot and kettle, says I.
The Clark govt was probably even more arrogant, surely Lindsay.
Ask no question, we will tell you no lies...