Labor’s move to abolish the council providing independent oversight of public record-keeping will further entrench the state’s reputation for secrecy over transparency.
Few people may know of it, but the Public Record Office Victoria is a unique body that collects and safeguards a selection of original documents generated by government bodies. Its collection ensures the continuity of the state’s collective memory and is the go-to source for anyone wishing to examine and understand our past.
It’s no small undertaking. The office holds about 100 kilometres of hard-copy records and 600,000 digitised and digital records dating from 1836 to the present day. It contains everything from birth certificates and council maps to highly sensitive police and government records. Consequently, managing such a collection is not just a matter of gathering and storing.Governments of all political persuasions have, at times, displayed excessive bias towards secrecy over transparency.
What has alarmed critics is the lack of clear reasoning for abolishing the council. An Allan government spokesperson sought to, instead offering a pledge that she would work towards “establishing more informal, flexible and ongoing consultative mechanisms to inform policy and practice”. In other words, the council is being dumped with a cursory promise that, some time down the track, the government will provide detail of an alternative body or mechanism to fill the oversight role that would form part of a digital-age overhaul.
The reality is that Labor’s bid to kill off the council under the guise of “digitisation” without offering an alternative will further erode the already parlous transparency record of this government and reconfirm the state’s reputation for secrecy and cover-up – a reputation cultivated by both the legislature and thesupports. But having an independent council protected by legislation is not inconsistent with this goal.
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