The Victorian government will be forced to publicly release thousands of pages of secret briefings behind the state’s COVID-19 lockdowns, following an almost four-year Freedom of Information (FOI) battle.
This week, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) ruled there was a high degree of public interest in the documents, which could run to up to about 115 briefs or 6,900 pages.
The briefings were critical in numerous lockdown decisions, including a decision to close children’s playgrounds on August 16, 2021.
‘It shouldn’t have come to this’: Opposition leader
Liberal MP David Davis is behind the protracted FOI fight with the Department of Health but was unavailable to speak on Saturday.
However, Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto welcomed VCAT’s decision to force the government to release the briefing documents.
“It shouldn’t have come to this. These briefings should have been released when the initial request was made some years ago,” he told the ABC.
Mr Pesutto said Victorians, and in particular businesses, had a right to know the detail behind why the state was locked down for such a long period.
“The government should have been willing, in the interests of transparency and accountability, simply to advise the Victorian people of the basis of decisions that actually had profound impacts on people’s lives and their rights.”
Appeal up in the air
Government minister Anthony Carbines said it would be a matter for the Department of Health as to whether VCAT’s decision would be appealed.
“The government has worked very hard through COVID to put public safety and public health first,” Mr Carbines said.
“The Department of Health are considering the report and the findings from VCAT, and they will take further decisions from there.”
According to VCAT documents, the government objected to the FOI request on the grounds it would divert critical resources away from the health department.
The department’s Michael Cain said the total processing time could be up to 74 work weeks, and conservatively cost tens of thousands of dollars — while the department’s FOI unit was facing a 25 per cent staff reduction.
Meanwhile, Jeroen Weimar, the department’s deputy secretary at the time, in October 2021 estimated the process could take much longer at up to 208 work weeks. The discrepancy could not explained, but Mr Davis described Mr Weimar’s estimates as “exaggerated” and “absurd”.
Judge rules department must process FOI requests
On Thursday, Vice President Judge Caitlin English said she was not satisfied that the work involving in processing the FOI request would “substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency [the Department of Health] from its other operations”.
Judge English ruled that the department process Mr Davis’s four requests in accordance with the FOI Act.
On Saturday, Mr Pesutto said “one can only suspect that the government didn’t want to do this because its reasoning might have been exposed as flawed – it might have showed deficiencies in the processes around these important decisions”.
Meanwhile, Mr Pesutto said while a public health response was always required, he said that didn’t mean that people had to be denied information about matters that directly affected their rights and livelihood.
“Our argument is that the Allan Labor government should have always been willing to release this information because we need to learn the lessons — there was mistakes made,” he said.
“People died unnecessarily, we know that from hotel quarantine, we know that many businesses were shut unnecessarily because of lockdown orders that didn’t allow them to operate. People do have a right to know.”
In October 2021, the state government was ordered to release the details of confidential lockdown briefings surrounding a five-day lockdown that February, after the state’s privacy commission found there was significant public interest.
At the time, Public Access Deputy Commissioner Joanne Kummrow found a key document contained “important information about the way the Victorian government responded to COVID-19, including the rationale for public health orders”.
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