No Right Turn on Labour’s OIA changes

Idiot/Savant blogs on the bill promoted by Labour to supress school assessment information:

There are a number of problems with this. In addition to being “class-based” (that is, targeting information based on its content or type rather than the interests its release might prejudice), it also categorically forbids release. And that has never been part of our OIA regime. While the OIA allows information to be withheld if there are good reasons for doing so, it doesn’t make it mandatory, and an organisation can always just release information if they feel like it. This amendment would forbid them from doing that. It effectively recreates the Official Secrets Act specifically for schools. The “justification” for this – that the public might “misunderstand” or “misuse” the information – is decidedly authoritarian.

This is a nasty regression from Labour, and one which undermines a fundamental part of our freedom of information regime.

I made a similiar point yesterday – this proposed law would make school assessment data more secret than security and intelligence data. The Government has the discretion to release security and intelligence data, but Labour want school assessment data to be prohibited from ever being released.

Such a wonderful commitment to open government and accountabilty for the $6 billion we spends on schools.