Anthony Albanese has backflipped on national cabinet secrecy, opting to continue to prevent the release of documents related to meetings of the prime minister and state and territory leaders, despite strident criticism of the practice in opposition.
At a press conference after his first national cabinet meeting as prime minister, Albanese confirmed the commonwealth had not proposed ending the practice, despite his accusation that Scott Morrison was “obsessed with secrecy”. Albanese refused to answer questions about why he had backflipped on the matter.
Morrison established national cabinet in March 2020, replacing the Council of Australian Governments with the new body, which his government claimed was exempt from freedom of information laws because it was a subcommittee of federal cabinet.
In August 2021 the senator Rex Patrick won a case in the administrative appeals tribunal which rejected that legal fiction. The government continued to block FOI requests on the basis tribunal cases are decided on their own merits and do not need to be followed as a universal precedent.
In opposition, after having his own FOI requests denied, Albanese told Guardian Australia the decision to block his request was “extraordinary” and warned that the prime minister’s department was “not above the law”.
“Mr Morrison’s obsession with secrecy has undermined the law that protects all Australians’ right to know and, if left unchecked, threatens other fundamental rights,” he said in December.
In September, the then shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said the Morrison government had not appealed the AAT decision because it would have faced “another humiliating rebuff”.
In March, Dreyfus told the Canberra Times Labor would unwind the secrecy scheme in government. “As [the ACT chief minister] Andrew Barr has observed, ‘national cabinet is reaching the end of its fairly limited lifespan’,” he reportedly said.
“But Labor’s position is that it was never subject to cabinet-in-confidence rules for FOI requests, and we would adhere to this in office.”
On Friday, Albanese was asked if he had proposed ending national cabinet secrecy and if so what had changed from his earlier criticism. He replied “no”, refusing to answer the second half of the question by stating “you got to ask one question”.
Patrick, who will leave the Senate on 1 July, said although Albanese had avoided the question “he won’t be able to avoid my challenge which the law requires a response to” – foreshadowing a future federal court challenge. “It looks like the transparency battle continues.”
.@AlboMP avoided @Paul_Karp’s question today on whether @ScottMorrisonMP’s blanket secrecy claim over National Cabinet will continue. But he won’t be able to avoid my challenge which the law requires a response to. It looks like the transparency battle continues. #auspol #FOI pic.twitter.com/hwkVWMkus1
— Rex Patrick (@Senator_Patrick) June 17, 2022
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said it was clear “this current national cabinet is going to be just as secret as the old one”.
“The public has a right to know what the nation’s leaders are discussing. In opposition the Labor party used to agree with that.
“It seems that now that they’re on the government benches, they want to continue Scott Morrison’s plan of secrecy.”
Earlier, state premiers largely endorsed the existing structure of national cabinet including its secrecy provisions, although some expressed a desire for it to work more collaboratively and allow states to set the agenda.
The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said that national cabinet was “really important” and “served the people really well when we dealt with the pandemic for two years”.
“If we keep that format in terms of making decisions in the best interests of the country I think we’ll get a lot of things done,” she told reporters in Canberra.
Asked if secrecy and solidarity would remain, the Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, said: “I would expect so ... I know people always look for points of difference but it’s actually been pretty good over the last two and a half years. And I certainly support those sorts of things.”
The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, said national cabinet can have constructive discussions “as long as the states have buy-in and it’s not an us versus them mentality, which I think it has been in the past”.
“It’s important, which I’ll be raising today, that the states have capacity to engage and put their own agenda into the national cabinet meeting. It can’t just be a top down approach.”
Asked about secrecy and solidarity, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said: “It’s a matter of fact that if you want cabinet government to work you need cabinet rules – they’re the rules that apply to national cabinet and should apply, so we can continue to get things done.”
In opposition, federal Labor opposed a Coalition bill to reimpose secrecy over national cabinet.
The ACT chief minister, Andrew Barr, described the bill as a “solution looking for a problem” because much of the deliberation of national cabinet was already discussed in the media – including due to extensive briefing of the media by Morrison’s office.
Dreyfus was contacted for comment.
