Revisiting Open Government: Recent Developments in Shifting the Boundaries of Government Secrecy under Public Interest Immunity and Freedom of Information Law

Abstract

Australian law regulating the use and disclosure of official information is in a far from satisfactory state. It suffers from both obscurity and untoward complexity … [and i]t is ill-suited both to contemporary conditions of government and to prevailing constitutional and democratic norms … Notwithstanding the progressive introduction of Freedom of Information regimes in Australia, we have by no means reached — or sought to reach —the position where … the free use and disclosure of information is the norm and secrecy the exception … While the balance is now changing, and desirably so, secrecy endures as the primary obligation and openness the exception…1