After many years of dealing with FOI and the complaint handling cover up process designed by our Government I have seen a pattern. This is what I have observed in relation to allegations of bias, manipulation of state records and misconduct against Government employees..

1. When you feel something is wrong and you request documents under FOI to shed some light you are never given all the documents upfront. Some crucial documents are always withheld. This is done on purpose so that you do not have complete documents to lodge your complaint.

2. If the documents produced show discrepancies, evidence of bias, misconduct and issues, because there are time limits to lodge a complaint, people tend to lodge their complaint with the documents that they have with the idea that their complaint will assist in getting to the bottom of the matter and that the system will want to investigate and look at the missing documents.

3. However what happens is the complaint is assessed on the basis of the documents received and a determination made that the allegations cannot be substantiated as there is insufficient evidence. The fact that documents show issues and discrepancies and are missing/withheld and/or even destroyed is not considered, nor are these documents looked at . You are told that because you only believe there is misconduct and because you cant prove it to their satisfaction (as they have the documents)the matter is closed. Never to be opened again even after the withheld documents are received and even if they fully support the allegations and even if the allegations involve children.

If you wait to get the documents then you are out of time to lodge your complaint. They have the bases covered.

4. If you continue to complain you get branded vexatious and your communications branded repetitious and you are defamed and ignored. Even fresh allegation involving different instances and children are ignored.

As a result those who are the target of this treatment are not protected.

Education – Keeping them Honest
http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/
Our children deserve better

I would just like to add that in my families matter documents were actually destroyed on the day the matter was being put before the Administrative Decisions Tribunal to force the Government Department to produce the documents and this is despite these exact documents being specifically requested to be produced under FOI.

I was then I was told that because I couldn't prove the initial allegations to their satisfaction as the documents were destroyed that they wouldn't investigate anything that happened subsequent to that even though we had made allegations of bias, manipulation and misconduct at every stage of the process and we had evidence to support.

The fact that they destroyed the evidence didn't seem to mean anything to anybody, as far as the investigatory bodies were concerned and the Department were concerned if they didn't have the documents they couldn't produce them. There were no consequences for having destroyed the documents and it didn’t seem to indicate a thing even though we alleged a cover up - for them it only worked to protect them.

The whole system is set up to deny the complainant procedural fairness and natural justice and to defame the complainant through Government action or inaction.

Education – Keeping them Honest
http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/
Our children deserve better

Jolanda,

You are exactly right in what you say - the government has absolutely no interest in exposing its own practices.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

As long as the bureaucracy is stronger than the individual, this sort of thing will go on. The whole situation is transposing to an end game where the only way the bureaucracy will change its ways is if something serious and unfair happens to a group or individual, the incident gets media attention, and the government, by weight of community feeling, is forced to reform the situation.

Until that happens, you're seen as just another person in the queue, unfortunately.

In my book I continually used the term "firewall" to describe all of these "decision makers", eg govt depts, ombudsman etc, because they try to keep you from your "day in court"

Most of them only make determinations [see the famous Brandy case] so even if they agree with you [which they are "not allowed to, or at least were not allowed under Howard], the Constitution says a Chapter III judge MUST come in at some stage [see Brandy]

we just had a victory of sorts under privacy act where we overtuned the Palmer case where it was said one MUST go to the firewall called Priv Commiss before going to court, by finding injunctive power at s 98 to go straight to court. Howard immedidiately bunged on a Law Reform Gig to get rid of s 98, but his timing was out, and then he was out [so the whole Priv Reform just fizzled out]

so now anyone can simply go straight to a court for eg CSA sins, and generally you don't need FOI

This situation, I am sure is not uncommon. Some departments are worse than others. When asking for FOI documents did the DET give you any reason why any documents were exempt under the FOI Act? Assuming there were exemptions in your case.

Jolanda, if the documents were destroyed could you put forward a complaint to the Ombudsman on the basis of that alone. That is,

1. asking why the documents in question were destroyed knowing full well that DET was required to attend the AAT.
2. why the documents were destroyed at all (is there some sort of statute of limitations on when documents can be destroyed?). My understanding is that old government documents are not destroyed until many years later after they have been archived for some period of time.

Perhaps you can find out the rules/guidelines for this at http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/

To get back to the title of this thread, I'm quite sure that Government Departments use FOI complaints as a "heads up" as to what is coming their way and then totally dedicate themselves to protecting themselves using a variety of tactics. It's their kind of taxpayer-funded early-warning system.

On the bright side, there would appear to be some daylight in matters of this sort. If today's Australian is anything to go by, the RAAF workers that took part in the F-111 deseal-reseal program look like they might finally be on the road to being vindicated and properly compensated.

The key to getting this outcome is weight of numbers - if enough people start saying something, eventually the Berlin Wall will be deluged, and then crumble and fall.