source - Alannah MacTiernan
Victory at the AAT!
The Federal Government has been ordered to waive charges it had tried to impose on attempts to gain access to information on the $1.6 billion Perth Freight Link as part of a cone of silence imposed on the project.
The Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development had demanded more than $2400 for a mere 88 documents on the grounds that the documents requested were “primarily of interest to [me] and not of a general public interest”.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s Senior Member Walsh handed down a decision late yesterday, finding that given the $1 billion-plus scale of the project, “giving of access to the documents is in the general public interest, or at the very least, in the interest of a substantial section of the public”.
The Federal Government had refused to negotiate on the fee, choosing instead to spend thousands of dollars on engaging black label commercial law firm Clayton Utz to defend the case after we launched an appeal.
In the past 18 months, the Abbott and Barnett Governments have used every measure to stop the public from learning about the genesis of this discredited project.
The Perth Freight Link is likely to end up costing more than $2 billion, once the cost of a new bridge is added – all to build a road to a port that will need to be relocated in the next seven to 10 years.
We are now moving to challenge the attempts to use ‘Commonwealth-State relations’ as an excuse to block the release of any documents about the costs and benefits of this project.
Labor backed a Senate motion this week ordering the Abbott Government to table further documents on this project, which it has, unsurprisingly, refused.
We will keep on fighting to shed light on this ill-conceived and highly flawed project.
A big thanks to our pro bono legal team Tim Hammond, Simon Millman and David Scaife - an unbeatable team.
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