Some tried to have these released under freedom of information and a member of Parliament also asked the Minister why they were not released. It took 5 months for the question to be answered in Parliament and then only after Minister Somyurek was sacked over allegations of branch stacking and other matters.

The first request was made to South Gippsland Council and they determined that the FOI request would cost the applicant a rather large amount of money to progress. This was possibly against the Act since such a fee is not allowed to be charged for release of documents such as in this case. The attempted over charging had the desired affect and the applicant withdrew the application.

The second attempt was made direct to the Minister of Local Government which had its DPJ department deal with the application. This application was refused on the grounds that the information supplied within the two documents was exempt as it was personal information.

The applicant appealed to the information commissioner. The information commissioner determined after hearing both sides, the applicant and the Minister’s office, that the documents were indeed exempt. The stated reason was because people had the right to submit information to the Minister in confidence and not have others know what they said to protect them. This despite it being on the public record that the Councillors had asked for the documents to be made public so that their side of the story could be heard.

The Information Commissioner also said that the personal information referred to in the documents belonged to the Councillors. The evidence tendered by the Minister’s Department was that they had tried to contact the Councillors to see if they wanted it released but were not successful in locating any of the ex-Councillors. On that basis, the information Commissioner refused the FOI request.

The final FOI application was made again to Council and they hand-balled it to the Minister’s office so again it ended up with DPJ to deal with. Nothing occurred until the matter was transferred to VCAT for an appeal. VCAT heard the matter and gave the Minister’s legal team a week to come up with a decision-if they released the documents the case would end, otherwise a hearing would occur and VCAT would make their own decision on the matter.

At the end of the week DJP handed over the documents in full. Not a single word redacted. It is to be seen whether the initial decision of the now Ex-Minister Somyurek is reviewed considering other matters that occurred since the Council was dismissed. At the very least, the Parliament needs to explain how they can make a decision to sack an elected Council with no evidence of wrongdoing having ever been proven. In fact, the Minister Somyurek is on the record as saying that the Councillors had done nothing wrong.

The released documents raise serious questions over the reliability and accuracy of the Monitor’s report and the question of whether due process occurred.