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The Greens will probably have some bills. But there's no reason we can't develop our own.
One obvious avenue is to bring Parliament under the OIA. Rod Donald had a bill a few years ago which I could dig out and post.
How much can we put into one bill?
From the Mexican Legislation I would like to borrow:
From personal experience I'd like to add
How much can we put into one bill?
As much as we like, provided it relates to one subject area. Typically for a member's bill shorter is better, but there's nothing stopping us from doing a more generic "Official Information Amendment Bill" to significantly reform the Act.
This may be opening a can of worms (and one of a whole carton of cans of worms that the Law Commission has unsuccessfully opened), but one aspect of the court records rules troubles me in particular, and might be resolved with a Member's Bill: right of access to court recordings and transcripts. At the very least, I think parties should have this access (there are instances of parties wanting to take issue with something that happened in court not being allowed access to a recording that was being made, which I think is outrageous). In general, the media should be given access to court transcripts when they are produced (eg transcripts of evidence that are produced as the hearing progresses: this would enable more accurate recording). There may need to be exceptions to accommodate things that are suppressed, but I can't think of any reason to deny media access when there's no suppression. Another problem, I gather, is that allowing access to recordings might effectively allow an end-run around the in-court media rules. But I don't think this is insurmountable. Conditions can be placed on access. Transcripts don't seem to raise the in-court problems. Audio recordings don't present the same problems as video recordings. Dunno who would care enough to take this up though.
Definitely one worth chasing. I know the Law Commission proposed a full-on Court Information Bill, and we may be able to find an MP to take it even if the government doesn't want to (and its the sort of issue which could actually pass). Alternatively we could try drafting our own
I'm not sure where this is up to, but removing the exemption for the IPCA should be on the list.
I'm not 100% sure but I think it needs a simple change to part 2 of the Ombudsmen Act to remove the parentheses (and contents) from this line:
I can't see any good reason they're exempt, particularly as the Police are covered.
Easy enough to do; I'll draft it over the weekend.
And we can add the Intelligence and Security Committee to the list of things to do in an omnibus bill.