Democracy Still Under Threat - "Oral briefings only for Haermeyer"

This stinks. Like a big fat dead whale that has blown up in the middle of a city street and coated the footpath and buildings in decaying blubber...

Oral briefings only for Haermeyer - www.theage.com.au

Apparently there was never any written communication about police corruption and gangland killings between Victoria Police and the Police Minister. None.

I can't believe this. It's just another case of political head in the sand to avoid the difficult questions that might come later, and is a real threat to democracy.

Our parliament is the heart of our democracy, and accountability to the parliament is paramount if our democracy is to work well. The ability of a minister to say that only verbal discussions were held is not acceptable. Not a single note, file, memo, or even an email.

Unfortunately, this kind of response is becoming much more common in modern politics. While I agree that being responsible for an entire department (or two, three in the Victorian Government) is a big ask, it doesn't change the principle of the minister of the day being the responsible person. And the ability to say 'I don't know' or 'We didn't write that down' just doesn't cut it.

Haermeyer and Bracks are not the only ones to do this, and are just continuing in a long line of similar ducking and weaving to avoid any tricky issues, most notably members of the Howard Government around a range of issues.

Being a responsible citizen in a modern democracy is hard enough. We deal with both information overload and a lack of information concurrently, while trying to sift through the junk to determine who to vote for. And I take my vote seriously.

But when ministers and the government go out of their way to deliberately not know something, then what hope for our democracy. I need my government to take responsibility for its actions, no matter how minor or insignificant they might think it is. They are the ones in power, and they owe that to their citizens.