Forty Years of FOI: Accountability, Policy-making and The National Innovation and Science Agenda

Executive power in policymaking has been the subject of longstanding jurisprudential and political debate. Innovation policies aimed at driving collaborative government and industry outcomes sit very much at the intersection of this tension. In the 1990s Christopher Arup highlighted legitimacy concerns around “corporatist” innovation policy involving greater government–corporate alliancing and selective policy measures, nominating procedural reform and audits to check policymaking power. However, the development of the National Innovation and Science Agenda shows these mechanisms to be less than effective. More than four decades after the Freedom of Information Bill 1978 (Cth) was considered by a Senate Committee, it is timely to reconsider the role of public scrutiny in policymaking. While increased scrutiny is at least part of the answer to better policy, the Freedom of Information regime faces significant obstacles in achieving its objectives in the innovation policy space, if not at broader levels within government policy development. Against the backdrop of recent calls for greater confidentiality in the policymaking process, it is argued that increased secrecy is not the answer.