Openness and accountability are key components of any democracy. In New Zealand, there are two pieces of legislation that ensure government agencies remain accountable to taxpayers by disclosing what they actually know - the Official Information Act 1982 and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987.

Both pieces of legislation are intended to require that agencies disclose information to the public, unless there is a very good reason for withholding it. The reasons for not releasing information are normally restricted to national security concerns and commercial confidentiality, and all decisions can be challenged by referring them to the Ombudsman.

Given there are three agencies involved in the Basin Reserve project - the NZ Transport Agency, the Greater Wellington Regional Council and the Wellington City Council - it's important to find out which agency holds what information, and so we anticipate making a number of requests under the relevant OIA and LGOIMA Acts as the campaign progresses.

As an exercise in transparency, all our requests and the responses we receive will be posted on the website as PDFs. There is no reason to think that the documents are covered by any form of copyright, so feel free to quote from and re-use these documents as necessary.