Victorian Ombudsman George Brouwer recently found that the Government is flouting the spirit of freedom-of-information laws. This has been raised before, but Premier John Brumby keeps hiding behind statistics about the number of documents released. The problem, as the Ombudsman found, is that the basic posture of agencies is to obstruct, not release. This can be seen in the number of complaints to Brouwer about FOI. Last financial year these jumped by 40 per cent.
One of the biggest issues, the Ombudsman found, is that agencies and public servants were struggling with the concept of a conflict of interest. What this comes down to is people using their government position to advance their private interests. "My experience in dealing with whistleblower disclosures," said Brouwer, "reveals many public bodies are yet to demonstrate that they fully understand how to identify or deal with a conflict of interest."
Brouwer found this misunderstanding was most pronounced in local government. Indeed, the Ombudsman found many local councils are simply not ethically serving their communities.
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