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Turnbull’s meetings ‘should be classed as secret Lib business’
The Australian 12:00am July 15, 2017
Sean Parnell
Meetings that Malcolm Turnbull held with cabinet ministers should be deemed Liberal Party business and therefore out of reach of freedom-of-information laws, his advisers have argued.
In an extraordinary escalation of the government’s campaign to keep official diaries secret, the Prime Minister’s lawyers have asked the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to depart from 35 years of FOI practice and declare such meetings purely political.
The Weekend Australian applied for Mr Turnbull’s diary of September 16, 2015, his first full day as Prime Minister after successfully challenging Tony Abbott. It was also a sitting day, so the Prime Minister — the head of cabinet, responsible for setting the government’s priorities — was in Parliament House.
While some jurisdictions routinely release official diaries, such as those for the NSW and Queensland premiers, the federal government is not as transparent.
Attorney-General George Brandis, who has responsibility for FOI, recently lost a three-year battle to keep his diaries secret, while Mr Abbott’s office denied or ignored requests for his prime ministerial diary.
Mr Turnbull’s office initially denied the FOI request using exemptions available in the act, including that national security and cabinet confidentially required such information to remain secret.
On appeal, Information Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim examined Mr Turnbull’s diary, received confidential submissions from the Prime Minister’s Office and sought advice from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.
Mr Pilgrim found no evidence that disclosing the diary would damage international relations or federal-state relations, did not agree the meetings were private or sensitive — “it would not be controversial or a surprise to anyone that the Prime Minister had scheduled such meetings” — and rejected an attempt to classify the diary as deliberative.
Mr Pilgrim did, however, agree with an exemption for “entries relating to meetings with Coalition members who were not serving ministers, and entries relating to party-political events”, on the basis they did not directly pertain to government affairs.
Not happy with the result, Mr Turnbull’s lawyers, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, (Joe Hockeys old firm) took the matter to the tribunal, where they have sought to widen the definition of party-political events. After abandoning the six exemptions in the act used in the original decision, the lawyers now claim the documents are not, as required under FOI, documents in the possession of a minister in his capacity as minister and directly pertaining to government affairs.
“The applicant contends that a number of entries in the diary do not satisfy the above criteria,” the statement of facts contends, shifting the information outside FOI.
“The fact that some of those entries may have involved persons who were serving ministers at the time does not relevantly alter their characterisation as falling outside the terms of the definition of “official document of a minister” and within the definition of an “exempt document” (containing some matter that does not pertain to government affairs)”.
It is not clear why Mr Turnbull wants the meetings kept secret.
His office has given the tribunal a statement from his principal adviser testifying why the entries should remain off limits, but it too has been kept secret.
