Excerpt from Summary
The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc (Forest and Bird) requested a copy of advice provided by the Department of Conservation (the Department) to Ministers regarding the Fast-track Approvals Bill (the Bill). The Department refused this request under section 18(d) of the Official Information Act (OIA) as the information requested was soon to be made publicly available.
I have formed the final opinion that the Department’s decision was not lawful because there was not, at the time, a sufficiently developed proposal to release all the information that had been requested. Reliance on section 18(d) in this case also frustrated one of the key objectives of the OIA – ‘to enable…more effective participation in the making and administration of laws' (Section 4(a)(i) OIA) – such that even if the legal grounds for relying on the discretion in section 18(d) were made out, the use of the discretion in these circumstances was unreasonable.