Rick Snell, the editor of Freedom of Information Review and lecturer in law at the University of Tasmania, notes the contrast between Australia and New Zealand's experience of freedom of information legislation, which both enacted in 1983. In New Zealand, Snell writes, "it was greeted with hails of dismay by public service unions, lawyers and academics." In Australia, the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, extolled access to government information as "a public right". Twenty years later though, the roles have reversed. "There are numerous examples of the New Zealand government publishing documents on the net that would have Australian ministers and senior public servants reaching for the smelling salts. From climate change to the economy to immigration, New Zealand routinely publishes material Australian bureaucrats would fight to the death to keep secret. And somehow, their government keeps functioning, and no one complains government suffers when the public gets to see more than the press release."

Entergy's Vermont Yankee nuclear power station. Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

One-time Greenpeace activist turned corporate PR consultant, Patrick Moore, has been hired by a Vermont group called Vermont Energy Partnership to help win a 20-year extension to the operating license of the aging Vermont Yankee nuclear power station. The continued operation of the nuclear plant, which is owned by Entergy, is being opposed by Nuclear-Free Vermont. Moore said that the storage of high-level nuclear waste on the banks of the Connecticut River in dry casks is "a perfectly safe and secure way to store" it. To which the president of Vermont's Senate, Peter Shumlin, retorted "I don't believe in Santa Claus anymore." Moore is also an "adviser" to New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, which is campaigning for a 20-year license renewal for Entergy's Indian Point nuclear power plant. He is also a consultant to the Nuclear Energy Institute front group, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.