NZ Council for Civil Liberties

Right to Know Act – A replacement for the OIA?

Published · Updated

There has been a lot written over the years about the shortcomings of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Official Information Act. Even just looking at our own work, in 2018 we posted A Better Official Information Act, and in 2019 our submission to the Ministry of Justice’s OIA consultation process called for a comprehensive review. There’s also 2015’s Not a Game of Hide and Seek by Ombudsman Bev Wakem, and 2022’s Ready or Not? a review by Ombudsman Peter Boshier.

Problems with the current act include the increased gaming of the system by government departments, Ministers making blatantly political decisions, the plethora of OIA opt-out secrecy clauses, the lack of coverage for Parliament and a number of other state bodies, insufficient consideration of public interest, and a largely toothless oversight mechanism.

A complete replacement

Recently we received an intriguing document from an independent researcher, Russell Opland, where he has given up on the prospect of improving the Official Information Act and has written a complete replacement called Te Ture Mana Puna Kōrero – The Right to Know Act. By starting afresh he has managed to return to principles and draw on international developments in freedom of information laws over the 44 years since our Official Information Act was passed.

Download and read Te Ture Mana Puna Kōrero—The Right to Know Act.

Some points of interest include:

  • A stronger regulator with the power to make binding decisions.
  • Promotion of the public interest test even in areas where it currently doesn’t apply such as national security.
  • The inclusion of private companies when access to the information is necessary for the exercise of protection of a right.
  • An emphasis on personal, rather than organisational, financial penalties for delays.
  • Placeholder provisions for discussions around Maori data sovereignty and how that might impact freedom of information.
  • Alignment with the Aarhus Convention around access to information about environmental matters.

Continuing the discussion

The Council believes that this proposal is a useful contribution to the ongoing discussion about improving our freedom of information laws. While we don’t agree with everything in the proposal it’s interesting to see an attempt at a complete replacement of the OIA rather than amendments to what is there. We are grateful to Russell for putting in the work.

We intend to publish a more detailed critique of the draft in the future.