Julia Gillard tries to deny my FOI request for her diary extracts showing meetings with the independents: what happened to ‘letting the sunshine in.’?

When Julia Gillard announced in September 2010 that she had formed a minority government with the support of several independent MPs and the Greens, she promised a new era  of openness and transparency in government.

“So let’s draw back the curtains and let the sun shine in, let our Parliament be more open than it was before,” she said.

Ms Gillard also told the Australian people at that time that she would be holding regular meetings with the independent MPs and the Greens.

So I thought it would be interesting to find out exactly how often she has been holding these meetings.  Given the new era of transparency she had promised, I could not see why Ms Gillard would have any objection to providing me with this information.

In 2010 I lodged a freedom of information (“FOI”) request with the government, seeking extracts from the Prime Minister’s diary, showing all meetings scheduled to be attended by any one or more of the independents or Greens.  My request was refused by the Prime Minister’s Office, on the basis that to meet it would ‘substantially and unreasonably interfere’ with the performance of the Prime Minister’s functions.

I appealed this decision to the Information Commissioner, who handed down his decision this week.  He found that it would not be a particularly time consuming task for the Prime Minister’s Office and could be quite easily done by a junior official, and overturned the refusal of the request.

A copy of the Information Commissioner’s decision is here.

This does not actually mean I get the information I am asking for.  It just means the Prime Minister’s Office has failed in its first attempt to brush off my request.  They need to now process it in the usual way.  (That means going through and identifying how many documents they are required to hand over, and then telling me how much it will cost to provide the documents.  Only If I agree to pay the cost specified will they then hand over the documents.)

I expect the Prime Minister will continue to use every possible trick to deny this request.

All of which raises the question: what has she got to hide?

How often has she actually been meeting with the independents and the Greens if she is so desperate to conceal the information?

And what happened to letting the sunshine in?