Key points
- Victoria’s Information Commissioner said the agency had received a record number of complaints about police delaying FOI decisions.
- The commissioner’s report also said the state government had not responded to its recommendation last year to review the FOI Act.
- Police take more than eight months on average to make an FOI decision.
Victoria Police has been blasted over huge delays in responding to freedom of information (FOI) requests in a damning report that also said the Andrews government had made “no progress” in improving transparency and information sharing with the public.
Information Commissioner Sven Bluemmel, who is tasked with independently overseeing the public sector’s information handling, said the agency had received a record number of complaints about police delaying FOI decisions over the past year.
The Victorian Information Commissioner has received a record number of complaints about Victoria Police responses to FOI delays.Credit:Paul Rovere
According to a new report, average delays had increased from 27 weeks in March to 34 weeks – more than eight months – in September, despite a law requiring all FOI requests be completed within 30 days.
The commissioner also found the force had failed to implement some recommendations from a report last year that urged it to hire more staff to reduce the delays, with the backlog of overdue requests growing from 2328 in August last year to 2637 in August this year.
Bluemmel said the processing delays were an “unacceptable situation which deprives people who need information from Victoria Police of an important right”.
He added: “However, it is increasingly clear that transparency and accountability build community trust, which is essential for democratic governments to work effectively, efficiently, and with legitimacy. In any event, compliance with the laws passed by the Victorian Parliament is not optional.”
Victorian Information Commissioner Sven Bluemmel outside state parliament in September.Credit:Wayne Taylor
The report found police took until March 2022 to expand its FOI team after the commissioner identified a staff shortage in September 2021.
Bluemmel said the Victorian government had still not provided a formal response to his previous call for a review of the state’s FOI Act, leading him to conclude there was “no progress” in reviewing the central framework underpinning public access to government information.
The Age’s Victoria’s Agenda project has established that integrity in politics is at the top of voters’ concerns in the state election. When this masthead asked readers what issue they wanted more coverage of in the campaign, integrity in politics and governance came first, for all age groups.
“In all these cases, a delay of access is effectively a denial of access,” Bluemmel said.
“When applicants are experiencing average delays of more than six months, we must ask: what has gone wrong?”
The Information Commissioner’s 2021 report also made recommendations to Alfred Health, the departments of justice and transport and Frankston City Council.
The new report found Alfred Health had improved its completion of FOI requests to 93 per cent, up from 46 per cent last year. But police remained a laggard among the agencies investigated, with timely FOI decisions declining further from 33 per cent to 26 per cent.
A Victoria Police spokesperson insisted it was committed to meeting its FOI obligations and was continuing to hire more staff to address delays. They said the force had implemented a new system to better manage requests.
This is an unacceptable situation which deprives people who need information from Victoria Police of an important right.
“Much of the information Victoria Police deals with is sensitive and confidential. We must give appropriate consideration to legal, operational, judicial and privacy implications in determining what can be released,” the spokesperson said.
Lawyer Jeremy King, from Robinson Gill Lawyers, accused Victoria Police of treating the FOI process with contempt.
“Victoria Police has become the most opaque organisation in the state, and the situation with FOI is making it worse. The police are aware of the problem, but they just refuse to do anything about it,” King said.
He said the response time blowout had placed immense strain on the resources of the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office.
Gregor Husper, principal solicitor at the Police Accountability Project at Inner Melbourne Community Legal, said he had given up making FOI requests to police because of long delays and what he described as obstructionist tactics.
“You know it will take months, and the police will invariably ask you to refine and narrow your search. And then you do that and wait another six months, and they eventually come back and say they won’t give you anything,” he said.
“As bad as the delays are, the bigger problem is that Victoria Police routinely withhold almost everything you ask for.”
Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said on Tuesday that the government had worked to make FOI requests more accessible, while also ensuring more data was available without a request needing to be submitted.
“Putting available data and available information in the public domain is something this government has always been focused on,” she said.
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