Access to the Ayers Report review of the Australian Federal Police has been denied to The Canberra Times by the Federal Government.
The Canberra Times sought access to the report under the Freedom of Information Act.
A delegate of the secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department ruled that the report was exempt as a Cabinet document.
The report was commissioned by the Government in February. It came after the Government blocked the ACT heroin trial and said it would review the resources of the AFP to see if more were needed to fight drug crime.
The ACT Government did not get a copy of the report, even though the AFP provides ACT policing. ACT Attorney-General Gary Humphries said later he had got an unofficial copy, but would not make it public.
The report was delivered in June and as a response, the Government agreed to $65 million extra for the AFP. Critics said this had merely replaced money cut since the Government had been elected.
The Canberra Times also sought any documents about why the report was not made public. The departmental delegate said there were no such documents.
The delegate, did however, agree to release four of five appendices to the report, which are purely factual. One reveals that AFP staffing since 1991 has fallen 17 per cent from 3117 to 2589 officers. Another lists people who gave submissions. The last explained some accounting assumptions and concluded that there would be a “”no-change scenario for the AFP” in the four budget years to 2001-02.
The Canberra Times will seek an internal review of the decision not to release the report.