When a community member seeks basic information about a major infrastructure project affecting her suburb, a reasonable expectation might be transparency. Instead, Susannah Aumann discovered that asking questions about Victoria's Level Crossing Removal Project at Surrey Hills came with a cost: confidentiality strings.
Non-disclosure agreements tied to government infrastructure projects represent a troubling strand in public administration. These contractual gags may be designed to protect commercial interests or project schedules, but they can create an uncomfortable dynamic where citizens must choose between learning how public money is spent and agreeing not to discuss what they learn.
Aumann, a resident advocate who has been involved in community campaigns around the Surrey Hills and Mont Albert level crossing removal for years, sought answers about the new Union station building planned for her neighbourhood. The responses she received, according to reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald, amounted to a form of bureaucratic deflection. Information came wrapped in confidentiality clauses that would have restricted her ability to share findings with neighbours or the broader community.
This raises a fundamental question about the relationship between government and citizens. The Level Crossing Removal Project is publicly funded and has cost billions of taxpayer dollars. The decisions about how stations are designed, where they are positioned, and what impacts they will have on nearby residents are matters of legitimate public interest. When government agencies use confidentiality agreements to restrict discussion of these decisions, they are effectively prioritising institutional convenience over democratic accountability.
There is a distinction worth making. Commercial confidentiality in infrastructure contracts serves genuine purposes. Private firms contracting to deliver projects need protection of proprietary methods, cost structures, and competitive information. But when confidentiality extends to the outcomes of those projects, to design decisions, or to community impacts, it crosses from commercial protection into something closer to institutional opacity.
The Victorian government has begun to move on one NDA concern. It introduced legislation to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements in workplace sexual harassment cases, reflecting widespread concern that NDAs were being misused to silence victims and protect reputations rather than resolve disputes fairly. The Bill is set to take effect from May 2026.
But no equivalent protections exist for citizens trying to understand how government infrastructure projects will affect their homes and streets. The use of confidentiality agreements in such contexts may be lawful, yet it sits uneasily with principles of transparency and civic participation that should underpin public administration.
The practical effect is corrosive. When residents cannot freely discuss the details of projects near their homes, community oversight weakens. When information flows only through official channels under confidentiality restrictions, the asymmetry of power between government and citizen becomes stark. A resident can be told about a project, but not discuss what she has learned; government retains control of the narrative.
It is worth asking what legitimate interest is served by preventing a community member from sharing her understanding of a publicly funded infrastructure project. Protecting commercial confidentiality, yes. Preventing residents from discussing neighbourhood impacts, managing timelines, or controlling public relations; these are institutional interests, not public ones.
Better practice would involve clearly distinguishing commercial confidentiality provisions from information about public impacts. If the Level Crossing Removal Project is genuinely committed to community engagement, withholding information from residents through confidentiality agreements undermines that commitment. Transparency builds trust; secrecy erodes it, especially when public money is at stake.
Aumann's experience points to a broader principle: citizens in a democracy should be able to discuss and scrutinise how their government spends their money. Confidentiality agreements that restrict that scrutiny are, at minimum, antithetical to the spirit of democratic accountability, even if they may fall within the letter of the law.