fitzroyalty

A lot has happened in the last month in relation to my battle to get the City of Yarra to release the information it gathers about food hygiene inspections in Fitzroy to the public. I think I’ve done almost everything I can do. Although it may still be possible to force this information into the public domain, I doubt that I have the time or resources to continue the fight. Instead of trying to do everything myself, I plan to enlist support from other individuals and from consumer groups.

The Fitzroy Legal Service

I made an appointment with the helpful people at the Fitzroy Legal Service to gain their opinion about what I could or should do next. The advice I received is that the Council has a legitimate argument in relation to privacy and the FOI Act. The FLS also says that S 54 of the Food Services Act makes it an offence for a council or other party to release information that could breach privacy. This complicates the issue as it is no longer confined to the FOI Act.

The FLS used the Law Institute of Victoria’s ‘Find a lawyer’ free online referral service to prepare referral letters for me for free 30 minute appointments with three firms that are listed in the LIV’s Legal Referral Service as practicing administrative law (of which Freedom of Information is a part).

I called each of them, and the receptionists of the three firms were all vapid imbeciles. I’d introduce myself, state I had a LIV referral, describe the area of administrative law and freedom of information and ask for an appointment. Each receptionists sounded vague, confused, bored to tears or just retarded. They all claimed their firms did not practice administrative law and had no one who knew anything about FOI. None wanted to give me an appointment.

Don’t trust the Law Institute of Victoria’s website

I then spent some time searching the LIV’s Legal Referral Service for myself. It does not list FOI as a discrete specialty so you can’t search for that. I pulled up the complete list of firms supposedly practicing administrative law then clicked through to their individual websites to see what they really do.

This confirmed to me that the specialties listed in the LIV’s Legal Referral Service are fundamentally flawed and inaccurate. The relationship between the two is fictional and of no consequence. This alleged service is a useless waste of time.

After browsing the sites of many law firms I found a well known firm that listed FOI as one of its specialties. I made a referral letter using the LIV system and called to make an appointment. The receptionist I spoke to did not know that FOI was listed as one of her firm’s specialties. She had no idea who in her firm practiced in that area and suggested that I was mistaken in finding such information their website. Holding Redlich = fail.

Advice from Mills Oakley

I eventually found the firm Mills Oakley, who impressed me by having an intelligent and helpful receptionist. I got a call back and had a quick conversation with lawyer Vaughan Hager. He suggested that he could do some research and then give me a response by email. Based on this simple transaction, at least one law firm in Melbourne practices honesty and decency in customer relations. The rest have a lot to learn.

I thanked him and was thrilled to receive his response, which suggests that it is possible to challenge the Council based on a public interest argument. VCAT could use this principle to overturn the Council’s ruling privacy argument in relation to the FOI Act. I don’t know, however, if VCAT has the power to overrule the Food Act on public interest grounds. So it could still go nowhere.

The Ombudsman

After having my appeal rejected by the City of Yarra I wrote to the Ombudsman. They phoned me on 30 June, but then took almost a month to send me written confirmation of that conversation (a letter dated 23 July arrived on 27 July). The Ombudsman is investigating whether the council is justified in not releasing the details of the offences based on the spurious complaint that this would impose an excessive workload on them, despite the fact that they have already acknowledged possessing the information in a convenient form (and in fact went to extra effort to delete it from the spreadsheet they sent me).

VCAT

The Ombudsman has refused to deal with the issue of the privacy of food business names and said I must take this issue to VCAT. Having my case against the City of Yarra’s rejection of my appeal against their original decision not to release the names of businesses breaching food hygiene standards in Fitzroy would cost me nearly $200 and could potentially lead to costs being awarded against me (though this is unlikely). That’s not a risk I am willing to take as an individual fighting this issue as a non-commercial community advocate.

Public campaign

The next logical step is to create a campaign to build public awareness of the issue and to build public support for changing the relevant laws. Unfortunately, public health is a social issue for which there is insufficient political will to engender change for the improvement of the public good. It’s useless talking to the Labor party as they are the party of secrecy in Victoria. The Liberals have no policies on anything and the only independent MP, Craig Ingram, represents a regional electorate where this issue is hardly a priority.

I suggest food bloggers pursue similar action with their local governments to secure the release of this anonymous information. It will at least reveal how many food businesses are registered in their area and how many inspections the council makes. This is a story in itself because it is obvious from NSW evidence that some councils are active in carrying out regular inspections and some are totally negligent in this area.

By comparing the data from different local governments in Victoria food bloggers could further expose the inadequacies of the current system and reveal which councils are the best and worst at inspecting food premises. The collation of this information could help build public awareness of the issue and expose the the state government to further scrutiny for not taking appropriate responsibility for the whole area.

Choice, the Consumer Action Law Centre (Vic) and the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH)

I have written to both Choice and the Consumer Action Law Centre (Vic) asking them to become involved in this issue. I emailed CALC on 2 August. So far no response, not even an acknowledgement of my email. Apparently emails labelled ‘Attention the CEO’ go nowhere. I’ll probably have to send it by snail mail. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve already failed. How hard is it to respond to an email by the next business day? I emailed substantially the same letter to Choice on 6 August. So far no response. For consumer oriented organisations, this is beyond mediocre. It’s utterly, insipidly, retarded and pathetic.

Update 13 August 2009: after 8 business days I finally received an acknowledgement email from Carolyn Bond, co-CEO of CALC. She says that CALC is not able to assist with this issue but has suggested I contact the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH), which describes itself as ‘an independent, not-for-profit organisation which is committed to furthering the public interest’. I was not aware of them before so I will send them the same email I sent to Choice and CALC and see if they are able to help.

Update 26 August 2009: I emailed PILCH on 24 August with the same email I used to contact CALC and Choice. I received a call today from a staff member of PILCH, which has expressed interest in my case. They have asked me to make a formal application to recieve pro bono legal advice to further pursue my objectives.

It’s now been 14 working says since I emailed Choice and I still have not received an acknowledgement from them. That’s a fundamental consumer action failure.

Conclusion

The best I could achieve given the current circumstances is to convince the Ombudsman to direct the City of Yarra to release the details of the offences, but this information is of marginal addition value. I have already published a statistical breakdown of the inspections, including failure rates. Knowing whether they failed due to cockroaches or faulty freezers is not going to improve our ability to make healthy choices.

The state government is ultimately responsible for the mess that is food hygiene regulation in Victoria. It does not have uniform standards requiring councils to report their data to the state in a consistent way. It does nothing to increase public health and refuses to recognise the increase in the public good that could be achieved by releasing this information.

The state government legislates to maintain secrecy in this area. It corporatises justice so that the Ombudsman’s office has no power and cannot address the public good. It forces consumers to spend their own money in VCAT to fight for the right to obtain information that they ethically, if not legally, already have paid for and own, and which should be in the public domain.

What happens next depends on the responses of the consumer groups. Given their inability to respond to a simple email addressed to the CEO, I doubt anything will come of my requests for assistance.

I’ve pushed this issue as hard as I could and ensured that some basic information was published despite the reluctance of the City ofYarra to release it. I know that some lawyers are serious diners. Unless I can find an SC with an interest in this case who is willing to work on it for free, this is the end of the line…

You might also like

Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round two On Thursday 4 June 2009 I received a response from the City of Yarra about my food hygiene FOI. They...

Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round eight A month ago I reported that the City of Yarra finally promised to send me the details of its hygiene...

Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round one And so it begins. I wrote last Thursday about making an FOI application to the City of Yarra to release...

Other posts you may find relevant and interesting

• Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round four, 2 July 2009
• Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round seven, 17 September 2009
• Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round one, 25 May 2009
• why am I surrounded by frickin’ idiots? Fitzroyalty vs City of Yarra – food hygiene FOI battle round six, 26 August 2009
• FOI on food hygiene in the City of Yarra, 21 May 2009

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 12:05 am and is filed under Fitzroy, Fitzroyalty, Yarra City Council, business, customer service, food, misanthropy, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.