Former unbiased senator Rex Patrick says Australia’s damaged freedom of data system desperately wants reform as his quest for entry to nationwide cupboard papers deepens.

In August 2021, the previous Senate crossbencher efficiently argued that the exemption supplied by cupboard confidentiality underneath the Freedom of Data Act doesn’t prolong to the prime minister’s nationwide cupboard conferences with state and territory leaders.

Patrick says the landmark determination by Justice Richard White within the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) — described by Labor on the time as a “devastating” blow to the Morrison authorities’s try to “keep away from transparency” — ought to have “opened the vault” to information and details about nationwide cupboard.