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Three cheers for the OIA and one for the government
By Steven | February 22, 2011
I’m not sure whether the government’s document dump about the BMWs came as a result of an Official Information Act request. (If it wasn’t, then someone should put in an OIA request just in case the government has decided to hold anything back. That’s what the Labour government did in its Corngate document release).
Either way, though, the documents released are plainly embarrassing. Many governments around the world would not have released them. We can thank our official information disclosure regime for a political culture where this sort of transparency is expected. Perhaps we should also thank this government for taking its obligations seriously enough to provide a very quick disclosure (though we might be forgiven for suspecting that the government figured it was better to front-foot the issue and take the hit now rather than string it out and risk being ordered to reveal information by the Ombudsmen shortly before the election).
One other thought: it has been reported that the Solicitor-General has advised that some information cannot be released because of confidentiality promises in the BMW contract. I do hope that those drawing up and interpreting that contract, and those charged with giving advice about what we can be told about it, have borne in mind Jeffries J’s words in Wyatt C0 (NZ) Ltd v Queenstown Lakes District Council [1991] 2 NZLR 180, 191:
There cannot be allowed to develop in this country a kind of commercial Alsatia beyond the reach of a statute. Confidentiality is not an absolute concept admitting of no exceptions… It is an implied term of any contract between individuals that the promises of the contract will be subject to statutory obligations. At all times the applicant should have been aware of the provisions of the [Local Government Official Information and Meetings] Act and in particular s7, which effectively excludes contracts on confidentiality preventing release of information.
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