The Coalition is attempting to shield the activities of the Future Fund from freedom of information laws less than a year after revelations it invested in an Adani company criticised for its dealings with the Myanmar military.
On Wednesday, the Coalition introduced amendments granting the sovereign wealth fund wide-ranging exemptions from freedom of information law.
Any Future Fund document that discusses “past, current or proposed investment strategies” would be kept from public view, as would records that show investing amounts, or mention the fund’s evaluation of potential or current investments and investment managers, according to a document explaining the bill.
Last year, FOI laws were used to expose the Future Fund’s $3.2m investment in an Adani company funding a crucial rail link from the controversial Carmichael coalmine to a port on the Great Barrier Reef.
The company, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones, has faced criticism in the United Nations for an arrangement that gave financial support to the Myanmar military. The Myanmar military has been accused of grave war crimes, including genocide.
Greens senator Nick McKim described the government’s amendments as a “calculated and cynical response to the fund being caught out investing in Adani”.
“They are Australia’s sovereign wealth fund which invests public money on behalf of all Australians, and should be accountable for those investments,” McKim said.
The government denies the exemption is intended to hide documents relating to the Future Fund’s actual investments. Finance minister Simon Birmingham says the exemption is only for “documents relating to investment strategies and the evaluation of investments”.
He said the Future Fund would still be expected to “publish details of its actual investments, including in response to FOI requests, and will continue to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny”.
“These amendments were first flagged as far back as 2009 by the Rudd Labor government, and will reduce the risk of the disclosure of highly sensitive confidential and commercial material,” he said.
“It will simply align the treatment of the Future Fund under the FOI Act with that of other entities that deal regularly with commercial information.”
But the bill’s explanatory memorandum says the exemptions will apply to any document detailing investment amounts.
“The FOI Act will continue to apply with respect to documents that do not relate to investment activities,” the document says.
The Future Fund was set up in 2006 to strengthen the government’s financial position.
It currently manages about $225bn in government assets on behalf of the Australian people.
The bill’s explanatory memorandum says the changes are needed to protect commercially sensitive, competitive, and confidential information.
“The public release, and potential for public release, of such information could compromise the ability of the Future Fund board and the agency to implement investment strategies effectively on behalf of the government,” the document says.
Rawan Arraf, head of the Australian Centre for International Justice, said the Future Fund already has a major transparency problem, even without the changes.
Other nations, including Norway, proactively publish details of investments made by their sovereign wealth funds.
The ACIJ was behind the Adani FOI.
“We shouldn’t need to FOI the Future Fund to find out how they are investing our money,” Arraf told the Guardian. “Australians have a right to know how taxpayers money is being invested and be open to scrutiny and to ensure it’s not being invested in unethical or unlawful practices.”
“But now they want to limit our right to know even further.”
The government says the changes would bring the Future Fund into line with FOI arrangements for the NBN and Export Finance Australia. McKim said those comparisons were “facile and do not stack up”.
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“Australia’s freedom of information laws are already weak and inadequate,” he said. “The government cannot be allowed to make them worse, and we call on Labor and the crossbench to oppose these changes.”
Following the Adani revelations last year, Future Fund chief executive Raphael Arndt told Senate estimates the investment was a “relatively small holding” and had not violated any investment policy.
“It’s one holding, about $3m in a $12bn strategy, so it’s a relatively small holding,” he said.
“We have a fairly well defined exclusions policy, which … is limited to exposures that are either illegal in Australia or breach a treaty that the Australian government has signed, or hold tobacco product manufacturing.”
