Labor, One Nation and Rex Patrick unite to decry Coalition’s refusal to release
It’s rare to see an issue unite the federal Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, independent senator Rex Patrick and One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts with such passion.
But all three in the past week have launched extraordinary attacks on the prime minister’s department for insisting that national cabinet documents remain secret under FOI laws, despite the government losing a case brought by Patrick in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on that very point in relation to a previous FOI application.
On Tuesday, Patrick escalated the dispute in the Senate, labelling the department’s secretary, Phil Gaetjens, a “disgrace”, a “henchman” for Morrison, and a “cover-up expert” over what he alleges is the department’s improper use of the cabinet documents exemption.
Patrick also used the Senate to name two officials from the department – Angie McKenzie and Hugh Cameron – as rejecting his freedom of information requests for national cabinet documents on the basis of the disputed exemption, which he argued amounted to bureaucrats ignoring justice Richard White’s decision in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
The Morrison government insists national cabinet is a subcommittee of the federal cabinet, despite justice White finding in the AAT in August that the evidence before him in a dispute over a previous application by Patrick did not support that view. McKenzie’s decision, from which Patrick read in the Senate last week, explained that she had determined national cabinet to be a subcommittee on the basis of additional evidence not necessarily before the AAT in the prior case.
White cited factors including that national cabinet members “did not regard themselves as bound to support decisions” made there. The department did not appeal against the decision.
In response to the decision, the Coalition introduced but failed to pass a bill to expressly exempt national cabinet documents from FOI but is now routinely blocking FOI requests on the basis of cabinet confidentiality.
In September, the national cabinet reasserted that disclosure of its documents and deliberations would “undermine the trust between the commonwealth and the states and territories and would prevent full and frank discussions that achieve the best outcomes for the Australian public”.
At Senate estimates, departmental officials explained they were not bound to apply White’s findings to other FOI cases.
Deputy secretary of governance, Stephanie Foster, said White was “making decisions on a particular case, on the basis of the facts in front of him in that case”.
First assistant secretary of the government division, John Reid, said the decision “has no precedential force beyond the facts before it”.
“The department is absolutely not ignoring the decision of justice White,” he said. “The decision of justice White has been drawn to the attention of all decision-makers.”
Nevertheless “the government’s position remains that national cabinet was established … a committee of the federal cabinet”, he said.
The stance has irritated not just Labor and Patrick but also One Nation’s Roberts, who told the Senate on 23 November that it was…
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