R2K Update from Parliament

The following is an update from today’s Parliamentary meetings about the Secrecy Bill:

During today’s meeting in Parliament regarding the Secrecy Bill, MP’s discussed in detail the proposed review panel that would be in charge of reviewing classified information and dictating whether or not it should remain classified.

They also agreed to put clause 21 into clause 17, which will create a single set of criteria for classifying and declassifying information. This will effectively scrap clause 21. State Law Advisors will have this in written form by lunchtime on 26/7/11.

Clause 22 was amended in two ways:

1. The bill calls for all organs of state to do a review of all their classified and declassified information at least once every 10 years. Results must be published in an annual report which will be presented before parliament .

2. A new clause will be added stating that an organ of state can decide to review their classified and declassified information at any time, as long as it is within 10 years.

Any requests for classified information outside of the annual report will automatically be under review.

Clause 23 was completely rewritten to be inline with PAIA clause 46. This new clause states that if a request is made for classified information, the organ of state must release the information if it is in serious violation of law, prevents environmental safety disaster or is in the public interest. This new clause will be explicitly inline with PAIA clause 46.

Clause 24 will be scrapped.

Tomorrow they will be going over the proposed changes and reviewing the appeals procedure. Stay tuned for more updates.