Yesterday, a judgement of the NSW NCAT Appeal Panel was handed down in long running GIPA (freedom of information) case I had against Sydney Trains. I lost.

While not at happy at losing, I'm also very concerned about how I lost. The effect of the judgement is that:

a) Agencies giving evidence on technical matters can avoid having their experts cross examined by having those experts give the evidence to a front man, who will then give it as hearsay, which the Tribunal can accept as evidence. Cross examining the front men is next to impossible, because they don't even understand the questions.

b) It doesn't even matter if agencies do this without informing the other party that the evidence is hearsay.

c) An agency can successfully argue that the release of information would facilitate a criminal act, even if committing the criminal act using the information is difficult and there are much easier ways of committing the act without using the information. This gives agencies a way of avoiding releasing information even where the release would make no practical difference.

NCAT has progressively neutered the GIPA Act to the point where an applicant has next to no chance of getting information that the agency does not want them to have. Annual reports from the Information Commissioner give a very distorted view because although information is released in part for many applications, what people get is mostly administrative trivia of little interest to anyone.

The only way to fix this now is to repeal the Act, and rewrite it in a way that prevents NCAT from construing it so as to favour agencies over the public whose interests the Act was meant to serve.

Tough luck, Sylvia, welcome to the world of reality.

Dear Sylvia,

You were very brave and you tried.

I also have learned the hard way that unless
you've got power and influence your chances
of beating the system are slim. I lost
eight years of my life due to attempting to
make changes. I should have just licked my
wounds and walked away.

Take care and try to move on.
Friends and family help. I hope
you're not all alone in this and that you
do have someone for support.

Thanks for the kind words, Foxy.

This GIPA application was about the design of the internal emergency door release systems that were installed after the Waterfall train crash. I was, and still am, concerned that it may have been designed more with an eye on avoiding delays to trains than in getting people out in the event of a crash. I've drawn the attention of the Office of the Rail Safety Regulator as regards one possible way it could fail badly. Based on passed experience I will get a totally patronising response that provides no information at all.

If it ever occurs, in the decades to come, that a train crashes and people are trapped inside because the door release system didn't work - remember this post.

Sylvia.

Hi Sylvia,

Thank You for responding.
What about the media ?
Especially contacting some TV channels?
A "A Current Affair?" is one. This needs to be
brought out into the spotlight. Channel 9
might also be interested.

Just a thought.

Foxy, as regards the possible failure of the emergency internal door release, I'm not in a position to say that it won't work. I think even A Current Affair would have difficult making a story out of "May not work, but we don't know."

As for the the freedom of information issue itself, it's really hard to get any traction. By and large, I don't think people care. Note how few responses this thread has received.