Proactively releasing cabinet papers is possible in ACT but decisions must come first: Andrew Barr

Mr Barr will this month discuss the issue with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who has accepted the recommendations of a wide-ranging review of the state's public sector that in part concluded cabinet material should be proactively released within 30 days of final decisions.

ACT Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee has also renewed her calls for the territory government to support her push to proactively release cabinet information following Queensland's endorsement, decrying what she described as a culture of secrecy from a two-decade-old government.

"This ACT Labor-Greens government routinely hide their failures and mismanagement from the public by refusing freedom of information requests on the grounds they contain cabinet material," Ms Lee said.

Ms Lee said the ACT had no excuse left following Queensland's endorsement of a proactive release model for cabinet papers and New Zealand's approach.

But Mr Barr said he was advised Ms Lee's proposal would not give the final say on whether material was released to the government and did not seemingly allow for material to be held back until a final decision had been taken.

"That would undermine cabinet government. We couldn't support that, but we certainly will be continuing what has been a long trend of providing more information," he said.

Ms Lee's draft legislation - which has not yet been presented to the Legislative Assembly - provides carve outs to prevent sensitive information from being published, but would broadly require material to be released within 30 days of it being considered by cabinet.

The recommendation made in Queensland in the review led by Professor Peter Coaldrake was that: "Cabinet submissions (and their attachments), agendas, and decisions papers be proactively released and published online within 30 business days of such decisions".

That broadly follows a New Zealand model, which was adopted under Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Mr Barr said there would be times when it would take the government longer than 30 days to reach a decision after information is taken to cabinet, or where issues took longer to resolve even after cabinet decisions were taken.

"An example is the government would - and we have - make a decision on what the beginning of our enterprise bargaining strategy will be, but it's going to take more than 30 days to resolve that and we'll not be releasing that in the middle of our thing, we'll be releasing an offer but we won't be releasing our [strategy]," he said.

"There's obviously got to be things that take longer and need to remain confidential whilst the issue is still being resolved."

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Mr Barr said most matters considered by cabinet were "boring" and the interesting matters took longer than 30 days to resolve.

"I think the important thing for most people to realise is that so much of it doesn't make the paper now, let alone when it is released," he said.

Cabinet papers are made available after 10 years in the ACT but individual documents need to be requested from the cabinet office, a process which can result in significant delays in the material being released.

The ACT cabinet office last year took 287 days to release a series of decade-old cabinet documents to The Canberra Times, responding to the March and April requests in late December following further media enquiries.

In an Australian-first, the ACT government began uploading the summary of decisions taken following cabinet meetings to the internet in 2011.

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