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Australian Way of Preventing Corruption (1)

Joewei Li

To the recent Wollongong Scandal and the Iguanas incident, people from China may wonder about how Australian political system worked in terms of preventing corruptions. I am here to introduce some basic information with some samples:

1. Freedom of Information Law

Freedom of information laws are used mainly for preventing the governments miss use their powers.

Federal (Commonwealth) freedom of information law is governed by the Freedom of Information Act 1985; Most of the states also have their own legislations on Freedom of Information for the state governments, such as the Freedom of Information Act (NSW) 1989, Freedom of Information Act (Qld) 1992, Freedom of Information Act (Vic) 1982.

After the 9.11 event in 2001 in the US, the Federal Government releases a series of anti-terrorism acts. Some restrictions had affected journalists to do their jobs. In the Australia 2020 Summit in April of 2008, when response the complaints on the current Federal Information Freedman Act, Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd expressed that the law for Freedom of Information will be reviewed and amended with a view to make it more measurable, as well as resolving issues against whistleblowers.

2 Defamatory Law

To ensure the freedom of speech, the US imposed a law to exempt any defamation claim by any government official either as a government agent or an individual against any medium or other individual. Australian law is a bit different: Any government, or any company, non government organization that exceeds 20 employees can not sue for defamation but officials as individual can, whereas the law industry has made consent on an implied guarantee for freedom of speech. So far there has been no case found that any official has usefully won a case against any defamatory claim.

I will discus the laws that apply to the recent Wollongong Council scandal and Iguanas incident (Iguanagate).

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