Thread by @joshuabadge

Thread: off the back of the #righttoknow campaign I’d like to spill some tea about how utterly broken Australia’s freedom of information laws are by using some examples I’ve encountered in my FOI work around My Health Record, the amyl ban & sniffer dogs in Vic

Example 1: the ADHA (agency in charge of MHR) collected data on everyone in the country. Exactly what kind/how much? Collected how? The relevant legislation at the time had about two sentences authorising the ADHA to do this and it was *extremely vague*

Over several months I sent in numerous requests to the ADHA media and FOI teams about how this collection operated. They alternately told me that the request was unreasonable bc it identified hundreds of documents but also because no such documents existed

From FOIs w/ the Health Dep I *know* that the ADHA has emails which explain the operation of this data collection in plain English, though the ADHA itself has never identified these documents. I lodged a review w/ the OAIC in 2018 but they’re only getting to it this month

Why does this matter? The ADHA might have collected a whole bunch of identifying information that isn’t *technically* governed by the MHR legislation like the health data and which private companies conceivably have access to etc

Example 2: the TGA let slip during public consultation that they had tested a dozen commercially available poppers. This means that they knew definitively how safe the products were so I FOI’d the lab report. They requested an extension 3 times and were late replying several more

During this process they spoke to an executive member of a health org who later suggested to me that releasing the report would damage the campaign to regulate poppers. I was asked whether I could withdraw my request (readers, I did not withdraw my request)

After months of emails, the TGA got in touch saying that they were declining the FOI request because they had decided to make the information publicly available the next day. Sufficed to say that I lost my cool and accused them of deliberately obsfucating my FOI request

After this they gave me the report which, to my knowledge, they never made available in full. I also had email the TGA when they published the names of LGBT+ ppl making submissions where they talked about personal nitrite use putting them at risk of criminalisation

Example 3: sniffer dogs are incorrect 75% of the time and we know from NSW that they are extraordinarily expensive. Weirdly, sniffer dogs aren’t governed by specific legislation so police aren’t obligated to say how much they cost

abc.net.au/news/2018-12-0…

I FOI’d Victoria Police for “the cost of the Passive Alert Detection program” ie the sniffer dog squad. VicPol responded by indentifying and denying access to two receipts for new dogs. When I emailed to say they had definitely misinterpreted the request...

... they replied saying they hadn’t (reader: they did). I then emailed the office of the Minister for Police who stopped replying after one email. I requested a review with the OVIC but the finding was that no such documents existed

Even went the extra mile and managed to have the question tabled in parliament. VicPol responded by saying that... they don’t know how much the sniffer dogs cost?? Absolutely wild & opaque response

This looks *a lot* like VicPol covering up how much drug dogs cost. There’s almost no evidence that they work as a deterrent and lots of evidence that they encourage OD’s in club/festival settings. VicPol is spending who knows how much on a tool which eg actively harms people

The kicker is that all of these orgs could just answer the questions in plain English. It’s called “administrative access” which I have had to explain to multiple FOI officers. Every administrative access request I’ve ever made has been denied or ignored /m

FOI is supposed to facilitate transparency. Instead, agencies use a black-letter interpretation of the FOI Act to dodge requests and redact info. FOI requests & reviews take months/years and often go nowhere. The system is fundamentally broken /fin