Public information is the number one requirement of a healthy democracy .
Although we live in a so-called information age, governments and private companies have become increasingly adept at restricting and controlling public access to all sorts of important information. For a while there was movement towards greater freedom of information in NZ this peaked in the early 1980's. During the New Right years since 1984, however, secrecy in government and private business has grown to become a dominant feature of government processes. Because secrecy is now so entrenched, corporations and governments can do things they would not dream of doing if they thought the public might find out. As a result, the back rooms of many government and private organisations will contain information just as dodgy as the Timberlands Papers.