Media release – Jack Davenport, 21 November 2024

Government departments slammed for “culture of secrecy” after removing public documents

Two Tasmanian Government departments have come under criticism for removing or potentially losing previously available public documents. The documents in question are Right to Information (RTI) documents relating to child safety, youth justice and family services, going back several years.

Children’s rights advocate Jack Davenport spotted the gaps when researching historic child safety information online, and engaged in a lengthy email conversation with the Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) and the Department of Health (DoH) to try and get the documents republished.

Emails Mr Davenport has shared show both DECYP and DoH have claimed that the documents are placed in an electronic archive, but that software changes now make it difficult to retrieve the documents. It is not clear if they have separate archives or are using the same one.

Normally, RTI documents are placed on publicly available departmental disclosure logs online. However, a series of departmental mergers took place in 2018 and 2022, leading to the creation of DECYP and DoH.

The RTI documents in question, which were released under older departments, appear to have been removed from public access during these mergers.

In response to Mr Davenport’s queries, DECYP were able to retrieve and restore a RTI document from 2020, after erroneously believing he was only after one document. When Mr Davenport asked about the other documents, he was told that further releases are “being actively discussed and investigated.  Once sourced we will consider the publication of those documents in the future.”

In their emails, DoH has said that “the electronically archived website is not in an easily accessible format.”

Mr Davenport says that the responses from the departments aren’t credible.

“This is yet another example of the culture of secrecy and contempt for transparency at the heart of the Tasmanian Government. It’s not an acceptable excuse to use the equivalent of saying that you’ve lost the keys to the filing cabinet.

“There are serious questions about how the Tasmanian Government manages public disclosures and approaches transparency. What are these archives; how they were created; how are they not accessible; who approved them; what else might be hidden that was previously available? These questions need answering.

“The Tasmanian Government should list all the documents they have placed on these mysterious archives, and detail the issues preventing their release. The public shouldn’t have to ask cap-in-hand for information that should be freely accessible.”

Notes

  • S.10 of the Right to Information Act 2009 (Tas) does provide for a Minister or public authority to refuse a RTI application, including if “the information cannot be produced using the normal computer hardware and software and technical expertise of the public authority.” However, this does not explain why the documentation was placed on an archive in the first place, or what specific issues with software now prohibit them accessing it (especially for DECYP, who could access one of the documents).

  • The Archives Act 1983 (Tas) sets out specific measures for managing archived material, but when this act was cited in the emails (to DoH) the response was that technical issues were a factor. This suggests that the ‘archive’ is not of a kind relating to the Archives Act 1983.

  • The disclosure log for DECYP is here. Their log includes only RTI’s pertaining to education (going back beyond the creation of DECYP), not child safety, youth justice etc. (aside from the exception noted in the release).

  • The disclosure log for DoH is here. Their disclosure log goes back to 2020. The Department for Health and Human Services ended in 2018.