Shaw James: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5401. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I would like to take another call in relation to the finance and Government administration sector appropriations this time in relation to the appropriation for Vote Ombudsmen and turn attention to the Office of the Ombudsmen to its revenues and to this Government’s attitude towards transparency and openness. I am delighted to see the Attorney-General is in the Chamber to have a discussion on this.I note that the Vote Ombudsmen appropriation for the year 2014-15 was $12.278 million and in 2015-16 it has increased to $12.387 million. So there has been an increase of $110000 approximately to cover the increased costs of investigation and the resolution of complaints. A hundred and ten thousand dollars will buy you perhaps one more staff person and their associated costs. What we know is that the Ombudsmen’s office is completely inundated with thousands of requests for assistance—thousands of complaints every year—because this Government is suppressing information and abusing the process to an extent that is unparalleled since the Official Information Act was created.I am not saying that it is the behaviour of this present Governmentonly. It has been sliding towards this over the course of the last couple of decades but things have got to the point now where essentially the system is now broken and the Government is using the underfunding of the Office of the Ombudsmen to supress the effectiveness of the Official Information Act. In the Finance and Expenditure Committee report we note that there was an extremely high staff turnover in the Office of the Ombudsmen. They are amazing people they are good lawyers and they are extremely good public servants but the burnout due to the sheer weight of the complaints that each of them has to handle the fact that they are not as well paid as they would be in the general market or even in other parts of the Public Service and the repetitive nature of the work of dealing with this enormous volume of complaints means that it is extremely hard for the Office of the Ombudsmen to hold on to its staff. This of course also means that the office is losing institutional knowledge as that turnover occurs—$110000 is not going to cut it in terms of solving those kinds of problems.We note and the select committee report also referred to this that when documents are released now under the Official Information Act some as late as a year as opposed to the 20 days that are specified under the Act often they are so full of redactions that they are basically completely meaningless. So there is a huge problem here.The problem is not to do with the Act itself. The Act is in extremely good condition. It is not to do with the Office of the Ombudsmen. They are working extremely hard under very trying circumstances.But this Government has turned the art of obfuscation into a really fine art an absolutely high art as demonstrated some time ago by the fact that the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment has got more PR people than it has health and safety inspectors which gives you some idea of where its priorities are. The priorities are on spin and public relations and not on actually getting the job done. When the cracks show in not getting the job done the Government relies on the spin to get it through and when the Opposition tries to do its job of holding the Government to account and speaking truth to power that obfuscation and abuse of the Official Information Act are the order of the day.This Government is using the constant underfunding of the Office of the Ombudsmen as a way of ensuring that it can stay unaccountable so that the Office of the Ombudsmen is unable to deal with the volume of complaints to do with the complaints that are coming through about that. So there are a couple of ways to fix this. We can increase funding to the Office of the Ombudsmen and I accept the Government’s position that it is operating within an extremely tight fiscal envelope at the moment but this is to do with the nature of our democracy. The other thing is to start acting in accordance with the Act because that will obviously put less pressure on the Ombudsmen—to actually live in accordance with the Official Information Act and to live within its spirit.