We’ve had many a rant on the privacy and liberty ruptures that are taking Australia down – with Attorney-General Nicola Roxon being the target of our criticism and now it would seem that the Australian government wants to tighten the right-to-know privileges even further.
“In an effort to cut costs”, the Aussie federal government will be taming the Freedom of Information Act and restricting access to some documents.
The Freedom of Information Act gives the public and media access to government-held information that is often not released publicly or refused on general request.
According to reports, the numbers of FOI requests have declined rapidly within the last five years – most likely due to the high costs associated with accessing the information demanded.
WordswithMeaning.org itself has only managed to be granted 3 FOI requests this year out of the 15 submitted. Our rejected requests mostly dealt with police brutality and cybercrime statistics.
There were 8027 requests prohibited during the year. Almost half of the rejections were in relation to asylum seeker difficulties.
Pingback: Australia; Where the Catholic Church is Immune to Compensating the Victims of Sexual Abuse.