Andrea Vance

Very often it's a number, a figure or a dollar sum.

And sometimes you don't even know.

what you're missing if you are feeling particularly aggrieved or you you think there's an issue with that you'll ask you know which section are you removing under which clause of the act and then you've got to get down to the business of deciding whether it's worth following up often you

you know national security is very difficult to overturn commercial sensitivity is a tricky one to overturn you have a number of options and of course the last one probably the most obvious is to challenge the refusal with the ombudsman which it takes time it's definitely worth doing i complain a lot i'm a pain in the bum i think for the ombudsman and i actually in my on my browser um you know my favorites um i have my email my slack and then make a complaint so

Yeah.

The OIA is more than 40, in fact, almost 50 years old now, and it hasn't kept pace with technological developments, with growth in the public service.

And I guess the growth in just the information revolution, people are more curious, they're looking for more information, and it needs a complete change.

overhaul it needs I guess a rewrite and many people have been calling for that.

Politicians parties have promised over the years that they would and then this it falls off the the agenda it just it just falls to the bottom of the pile they don't see it as very important.

So what we're seeing is as a frequent user of the OIA, we're seeing delays, excessive extensions, I think an overuse of withholding grounds.

We're also seeing political management of releases and that's a feature of successive governments.

That's not a new thing.

And then also, I think, you know, you'd be familiar with the public service cuts.

So there's resource pressures.

I think most people who use the OAA frequently are frustrated that there are no penalties for breaching it, that there's no accountability.

You can take a complaint to the ombudsman if you're lucky and you win.

Some months and months and months later, you might get that information released.

But you get a letter of apology and that's it, really.

No question.

For breaches of the OIA.