Dr WOODRUFF question to PREMIER, Mr ROCKLIFF
The Integrity Commission has released a scathing report of serious mismanagement of RTI requests by the Department of Health. In 2022 we wrote to you with concerns about what was happening with RTIs at Health, about the particular employee at the centre of this report and the fact the RTI Act was being breached on a regular basis. Your response as Premier and then Health minister was to dismiss our concerns, but now the Integrity Commission has found this RTI officer did in fact make misleading decisions, subverted the internal review process and prepared responses to information requests that were unlawful. They also found the Health department set up an RTI panel to oversee requests for information, which we believe was designed to run cover for ministers and recommend its disbandment. In the words of the commission, these panels have serious misconduct risk and a capacity to subvert the RTI Act.
How many of these RTI panels are in place across agencies and will you move to immediately disband any still in place to prevent the serious misconduct the commission has highlighted?
Madam SPEAKER – The time for the question has expired.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for her question. I will seek to inform myself around the correspondence between myself and yourself and see if your characterisation is indeed correct, which I doubt, but I will go back to that correspondence. I will take the matter that you have asked about on notice in terms of your reference to panels.
Dr Woodruff – The commission’s reference.
Mr ROCKLIFF – Well, as referenced in your question regarding panels. The Attorney-General has also worked through these matters in terms of another question, but I repeat that yesterday we acknowledged the Integrity Commission tabled both its investigation report into the handling of an RTI request by the Department of Health and a research paper on the RTI regime. I accept that and we take these matters very seriously, Dr Woodruff.
In respect to the investigation report, I am advised that the Department of Health has already disbanded its RTI panel and has developed a new RTI policy and procedures. The department has accepted all recommendations, and my understanding is that a statement has been released today by Mr Shane Gregory with respect to these matters which detail that response.
In line with Integrity Commission’s recommendations, the department will initiate an ED5 investigation to determine whether an employee has breached the State Service Act and, of course, as you and I would expect, the Department of Health will work with all agencies and the head of the State Service on continuing to improve RTI processes, including training. Members will also know that improving RTI processes was also a recommendation to a subject earlier in the day concerning the commission of inquiry and work had already commenced in the Department of Premier and Cabinet on the RTI Uplift Project.
Dr WOODRUFF – Madam Speaker, a supplementary?
Madam SPEAKER – I will hear the supplementary but I thought it was answered.
Dr WOODRUFF – Premier, will you make the policies and processes, the new ones that you just referred to in the Department of Health and any other departments, fully public?
Mr ROCKLIFF – Yes.
