A legal expert has criticised Australia’s freedom of information regime after spending two years and more than $1,000 trying to shed light on Australia’s enormous lobbying effort to prevent the Great Barrier Reef from being listed as “in danger”.
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| Australian officials spent more than $100,000 lobbying Unesco members to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the ‘in danger’ list. |
In 2014-15, Australian government officials spent more than $100,000 visiting and lobbying members of Unesco’s world heritage committee to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the “in danger” list.
A group of Australian and US environmental lawyers had found the dangers to the reef overwhelmingly met the criteria for such a listing, but Australia’s lobbying was ultimately successful.
The legal academic Prof Reece Walters, of Deakin University, wanted to understand how far Australia had gone in its taxpayer-funded campaign.
Read the story from The Guardian by Christopher Knaus - “Attempts to uncover Great Barrier Reef lobbying thwarted, researcher says.”
