Monday 19 September 2011

Running scared over 1080 report

“The Environment Commissioner’s office response to a DSC OIA request for a list of the people she communicated with in preparing her recent 1080 report reveals the extraordinary secrecy which exists not only regarding OIA requests but which also surrounds information under the Environment Act” said DSC Health spokesman David Tranter.

“The response from the Commissioner’s “Adviser (Strategy and Projects)” Karl Beckert is one of the most tortuous pieces of gobbledegook and evasion I have seen in 20 years of involvement in matters relating to the public’s right to know what goes on when governments and officialdom hide behind curtains of secrecy, Mr. Tranter said.

“According to Mr. Beckert section 20(2) of the Environment Act, “requires the Commissioner to maintain secrecy in respect of all matters that come to her knowledge in the exercise and performance of her powers and functions under the Environment Act”. Although he went on to say that the Commissioner can disclose information, “in limited circumstances”, even this is only when the Commissioner “considers it appropriate for her to do so….”. and that Section 20(2) “takes precedence over the Official Information Act by virtue of section 52(3)(b)(i) of the Official Information Act”. In effect this means that there are no checks and balances whatsoever over the office of Environment Commissioner.

“This astonishing web of obfuscation and gobbledegook exceeds anything I have seen before regarding denial of the public’s right to know and recalls the poet Alexander Pope’s wonderful lines; “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”, Mr. Tranter said. But for his position in history one could imagine Pope had the Environment Commissioner in mind when writing this.

“That the Commissioner is supposedly subject to the OAI but that under the Environment Act she can at her discretion deny such a simple request as a list of the people she communicated with regarding her 1080 report shows what a sham the access to information processes have become in New Zealand. Since the Commissioner claims to have widely consulted with both sides of the 1080 controversy it would obviously be in her interests to say just who she did consult with. That she refuses to do so can lead to only one conclusion - that revealing those she consulted leading to her white-washing the 1080 agenda would seriously embarrass her.

“As a final snub to those who believe the public have the right to know, Mr. Beckert observed that although the Commissioner’s decision, “is reviewable by the Ombudsmen…. The Ombudsmen have no power to recommend release of this information….” - thus adding downright arrogance to paranoid secrecy.

“And so the scurrilous 1080 agenda continues with repeated botch-ups by those spreading the poison - and all aided and abetted by the very official supposedly acting as watchdog over the New Zealand environment, Mr. Tranter concluded.

ENDS

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