Since the Commonwealth enacted Freedom of Information [FOI] legislation in 1982, the States and Territories have followed suit with their own Freedom of Information legislation in that odd homogeneous manner in which government is conducted in Australia. In NSW the Freedom of Information Act was introduced by the Greiner Government in 1989 and it has since been amended a few times to incorporate local government and to reduce wait times.
(more)
cam : Plug for a Public Forum in Sydney on the FOI: The reason I explored this subject was because I got notice of a public forum that the NSW Greens are holding on the NSW FOI Act;
The NSW Greens have been doing good extra-parliamentary work in seeking transparent government from the NSW Parliament which includes manually constructing
a website database that lists party donors
and another which
contains the salaries, expenses and perks of NSW politicians
.
cam
Guy : Political dominance breeds...: It is hard not to conceive of the government\'s only marginal interest in improving FOI as a function of how dominant the NSW State Government has been for most of the last decade. If politics in NSW was more competitive, there would be greater emphasis placed on improving somewhat esoteric aspects of government like FOI.
If the NSW Libs were smart they would make the improvement of FOI in NSW a well-publicised plank of their 2007 election campaign.
New South Wales was once the sole colony of Australia. In the 1850's Australians started demanding forms of self-government which fitted in with British policy of the time. After a battle over what form this new self-government would take, in which William Wentworth tried to establish a titled Legislative Council, a westminster form of responsible government was established. This left the Republicans disappointed, as well as those that wanted innovation such as a Bill of Rights included.
Since then the
NSW Constitution
has been
amended often
, in the last ten years being rather innovative for Australian government institutions for establishing a fixed term election period. More recently a Constitutional Amendment has been proposed which would remove all mentions of the Monarchy from the NSW Constitution.
(more)
