A recent incident highlights further collapse in accessibility to basic public information in Tasmania – maybe it has happened in other Australia jurisdictions as well! On speaking recently with a colleague in NSW I was told that she had to apply under FOI to get hold of a copy of a Media Release from a few years ago. Eventually they only provided her with a hard copy.
While doing an on line search for some public information on heavy metal contamination in north east rivers in Tasmania – Royal George, Avoca, Ringarooma, Pioneer areas I clicked onto the [b]Pollution Information Tasmania[/b] website:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Toxic_heavy_metals_in_Tasmania
At the bottom of this web page there is a link to:
Media releases on Royal George and the St Paul’s and South Esk Rivers
• Dr Chrissie Pickin, “Continued Monitoring of Heavy Metal Health Issues Recommended”, Tasmanian Government Media Releases, October 12, 2010.
After clicking onto this link here for this first time – this came up:
http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/?id=30629
Under the Media Releases heading a click onto View more releases – this came up:
http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/media_room
On this page it states:
Releases prior to 1st of May 2012 are available at archive.mediatas.gov.au
After putting in the title of the above Media Release the response was:
No notices match your search. This site’s content is no longer updated. For up to date information and media releases please visit http://www.premier.tas.gov.au
This is a media merry-go-round if ever I saw one – a real disappearing trick.
Using the Wayback Machine facility at http://archive.org/index.php no information on this media release could be found.
With the government’s so called commitment to transparency and ‘right to know’ this case highlights how simply public information can be disappeared!
If it is going to be difficult to pin down Governments on what they actually released to the media in the past, what hope have we got for accountability and transparency in the future?
From an information website point of view it will mean that community-based websites relying on these links being easily accessible will need to think again. If government can simply expunge their media releases that have been placed on their public websites then the goal posts have been shifted once again.
This activity by Government of course reflects on the usefulness of any community based public interest website for any reader and especially researchers and journalists alike.
We are used to the constantly changing Government URLs but this is just ridiculous. And this in the lead up to state/federal elections – so exactly what did the Government say?
