The Destruction of the “Heiner Documents” and the Accountability of Cabinet in Queensland

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Author(s)
Day, Aaron
Lawson, Charles
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2014
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The 'Heiner documents' were made in the course of an inquiry and the Queensland Cabinet later decided that they be destroyed. Their destruction arguably prejudiced and/or frustrated potential litigation. The issue addressed by this article is if a present day Cabinet was to make such a decision what administrative recourse might be available to challenge that decision? The article concludes that such a decision could again be made and that recourse to the various administrative reforms including the Public Records Act 2002 (Qld), the Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld) and the Constitution of Queensland 2001 (Qld) provides ...
View more >The 'Heiner documents' were made in the course of an inquiry and the Queensland Cabinet later decided that they be destroyed. Their destruction arguably prejudiced and/or frustrated potential litigation. The issue addressed by this article is if a present day Cabinet was to make such a decision what administrative recourse might be available to challenge that decision? The article concludes that such a decision could again be made and that recourse to the various administrative reforms including the Public Records Act 2002 (Qld), the Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld) and the Constitution of Queensland 2001 (Qld) provides no comfort. The episode demonstrates that by giving Cabinet documents a special preserve of confidentiality there is a cost that challenges the foundations of responsible government.
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View more >The 'Heiner documents' were made in the course of an inquiry and the Queensland Cabinet later decided that they be destroyed. Their destruction arguably prejudiced and/or frustrated potential litigation. The issue addressed by this article is if a present day Cabinet was to make such a decision what administrative recourse might be available to challenge that decision? The article concludes that such a decision could again be made and that recourse to the various administrative reforms including the Public Records Act 2002 (Qld), the Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld) and the Constitution of Queensland 2001 (Qld) provides no comfort. The episode demonstrates that by giving Cabinet documents a special preserve of confidentiality there is a cost that challenges the foundations of responsible government.
View less >
Journal Title
QUT Law Review
Volume
14
Issue
2
Publisher URI
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2014. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia Licence (CC-BY 3.0 AU) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en_GB), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subject
Administrative law