The inaugural Freedom of Information commissioner has called for an exemption which shields the parliamentary departments from transparency legislation to be "undone", after a decade of inaction.
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James Popple, who served as the federal government's inaugural FOI commissioner from 2010 to 2014, has questioned why the parliamentary departments remain out of scope of the Freedom of Information Act, a decade after a key review found the legislation should be applied.
The affected departments include the Parliamentary Services Department, which manages supports and services at Parliament House, as well as the much smaller Departments of the Senate and House of Representatives.
It comes as the Attorney-General's Department says it's considering several reviews into the FOI Act, including a 2013 review conducted by Dr Allan Hawke, which recommended exemptions for parliamentary departments be repealed.
"In the decade since Dr Hawke's recommendation, I have not heard any good reason why the Parliamentary departments should not be subject to the FOI Act in relation to administrative documents," Mr Popple told The Canberra Times.
"It is time for the 'interim measure' of exempting the Parliamentary departments to be undone."
Mr Popple made the comments in his capacity as a former FOI commissioner, but his views do not represent his current organisation, the Law Council of Australia.
![The departments which keep Parliament House running are still shrouded by secrecy. Picture by Dion Georgopoulos The departments which keep Parliament House running are still shrouded by secrecy. Picture by Dion Georgopoulos](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/143258707/830ff749-07a6-489a-a57d-da0ac301f1a6.jpg/r0_383_7500_4616_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The parliamentary departments were initially exempt from the FOI Act, which came into effect in 1982, but in 2012, the federal government realised that a change to a different piece of legislation - the Parliamentary Services Act - meant that the FOI Act had applied to these departments since 1999.
Then Leader of the House, Anthony Albanese, introduced legislation to temporarily exempt the parliamentary departments from the loophole, stressing it as an interim measure, but over a decade later, it remains in place.
Mr Popple, and former independent senator Rex Patrick, have called for these departments to be subject to the FOI Act in the same way that courts are, whereby only documents relating to their management and administration are accessible.
"The FOI act allows the courts to be FOI'ed, just not in relation to the judicial work of the judges," Mr Patrick said.
"The FOI act should allow Parliamentary Services to be FOI'ed, with an appropriate carve out to avoid intruding into work carried out by parliamentarians."
Mr Patrick, now a prominent transparency advocate, echoed comments from Mr Popple: "Parliamentary services is part of the executive government, there is no reasonable case to exclude their activities from the shining light that FOI is," he said.
A spokesperson for the responsible department said the government "is committed to an effective FOI regime which balances the public interest in transparency, with the need for confidentiality in some circumstances."
"The government is considering the recommendations made by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee's Inquiry into the Operation of Commonwealth Freedom of Information Laws and previous inquiries, including the 2013 Hawke Review," they said.