Australia’s defence department has “stonewalled” freedom of information requests about politicians’ use of its taxpayer-funded VIP jet fleet, prompting a scathing intervention from the information commissioner.
In 2021, the former government decided to stop publishing six-monthly reports about politicians’ use of the RAAF business jet fleet, citing unspecified security concerns.
The decision, made suddenly and without proper explanation, means the public is blind to how MPs are using the exorbitantly expensive fleet to ferry themselves around the country.
It also ended a longstanding practice in place since October 1967, after the so-called “VIP Affair” nearly brought down then prime minister Harold Holt and minister for the air, Peter Howson.
Since then, the reports have helped expose the way MPs on both sides of politics have used the VIP flights for questionable purposes, including their use to attend Labor and Liberal party fundraisers, the Melbourne Cup, or between capital cities when normal commercial flights are readily available.
The records have also been used to reveal how taxpayers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for so-called “ghost flights”, where empty private jets are dispatched at enormous expense simply to pick up politicians and return them to Canberra in place of commercial airline travel.
The Labor government has so far declined to say whether it will resume publishing the reports on the jet fleet’s use, pointing to an ongoing security review by the defence department, Australian Federal Police, and the department of finance, which began in 2021.
The Greens senator David Shoebridge requested details about the aircraft’s use through freedom of information laws last month.
The department repeatedly asked for more time to respond to his request, blaming, among other things, the inability of its IT system to produce the information.
Shoebridge gave the department repeated extensions, until it went to the information watchdog, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, to make another request for more time.
In a decision on 10 July, the OAIC was scathing of the department’s approach to the FoI and ordered that it meet its original statutory deadline for responding to the request, which was 2 July.
The OAIC found the FoI request was simple and there was “limited available evidence” of defence doing anything to process it.
“The FoI applicant’s request does not appear particularly complex, based on the limited range and number of documents captured by the request and the limited evidence of any technical or practical challenges involved in the processing of the request,” the OAIC’s ruling found.
“In declining this extension, I have also considered the limited available evidence of work undertaken by The Department to process the FoI request to date and limited explanation as to the steps involved, to finalise the request.”
The department is yet to act on the OAIC’s decision, nine days later.
Shoebridge accused the department of stonewalling. He said the case was a clear demonstration of how flaws with Australia’s FoI system were harming government transparency and questioned how defence was allowed to repeatedly breach statutory deadlines and obligations without any consequence.
“This is information that used to be routinely disclosed but has now, for an unstated reason, become a state secret,” he said. “I understand that this information about extremely costly RAAF flights for members of parliament can sometimes be politically embarrassing, but that must not be the test for failing to disclose.
“It seems pretty clear that it’s politics, not some pretend excuse about IT, that’s delaying the release. To be honest if the RAAF’s IT system can’t punch out a straightforward data report on special purpose flights then heaven help us if it needs to deal with a serious conflict.”
The defence department was approached for comment but did not respond by deadline.
Defence has also ceased providing details of the flights, thought to cost roughly $4,600 an hour, to the independent expenses watchdog, which has a role in recovering money from the travel budgets of individual MPs where flights are misused.
