History of the Office
As part of a growing movement throughout the world in the 1970s, the South Australian Government decided to establish an Office of Ombudsman and introduced legislation into the South Australian Parliament.
After consideration and amendment, the Ombudsman Act was passed on 23 November 1972 and proclaimed on 14 December 1972, and the Office of the Ombudsman was opened to receive complaints. The Office was initially established in Parliament House but moved in 1973 to the tenth floor of 50 Grenfell Street where it remained until relocated within the building to the fifth floor in June 1997.
The first Ombudsman was Mr Gordon Combe, a former officer of the Parliament. Mr Combe remained Ombudsman until his retirement in January 1980. The table below shows the Ombudsmen and Acting Ombudsmen from this period until today.
| Ombudsman | Name | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| First | Mr Gordon Coombe | 1972-January 1980 |
| Acting | Mr LWA Myers | January-July 1980 |
| Second | Mr Robert Bakewell | 1 July 1980-31 March 1985 |
| Third | Ms Mary Beasley | 1 April 1985-October 1985 |
| Acting | Mr Eugene Biganovsky | 24 October 1985-February 1986 |
| Fourth | Mr Eugene Biganovsky | February 1986-22 June 2007 |
| Acting | Ms Suzanne Carman | 23 June 2007-12 September 2007 |
| Acting | Mr Ken MacPherson | 13 September 2007-31 May 2009 |
| Fifth | Mr Richard Bingham | 1 June 2009-Present |
The Ombudsman Act did not initially provide the Ombudsman with jurisdiction in respect of local government councils but these were brought within jurisdiction in 1975.
Whilst the Ombudsman commenced with only one Act of Parliament providing guidance, the addition of several other areas of jurisdiction to the Ombudsman's work now sees four separate Acts giving the Ombudsman particular roles.
The Ombudsman Act remains the principal legislation, but in 1992 the proclamation of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and the Local Government (Freedom of Information) Amendment Act gave the Ombudsman the role of external reviewer of decisions regarding access to information. The local government FOI provisions have now been incorporated directly into the FOI Act and removed from the Local Government Act.
The Whistleblowers Protection Act 1993 gave the Ombudsman the role of receiving ‘public interest information’ as described under that Act.
Finally, amendments to the Local Government Act in 1996 gave the Ombudsman the specific role of reviewing and reporting on decisions by Councils to preclude the public from meetings or to refuse access to minutes of meetings.
In the first full year of the Ombudsman's operation, the Office received 726 complaints against bodies within the Ombudsman's jurisdiction. In 2010/11 the Ombudsman's Office received 3,036 complaints and conducted 107 reviews under the Freedom of Information legislation.
