Tom French (Moore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in strong support of the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025. It's a bill that brings one of our most important democratic laws into the modern age. At its heart freedom of information, FOI, is about trust. Governments act on behalf of the people and the people have a right to see how those decisions are made. It's how citizens hold power to account—whether it's pension decision, a visa application or a policy made in Canberra. When people see how government works, they are more likely to trust it. When they can't, suspicion fills the gap. The purpose of FOI is simple: to put information and therefore power back into the hands of the public. But the FOI system we rely on today is not fit for purpose. It was built for a world of filing cabinets and fax machines, not for cloud services and automated data.

The Freedom of Information Act 1982 was passed over 40 years ago. Back then a big data problem meant someone had lost their floppy disk. The scale of modern government could not have been imagined. The Department of Home Affairs alone now holds nearly a billion records. Across government, agencies processed over 43,000 requests in 2023-25, which is the highest number on record. The cost of handling them was almost $98 million—a 14 per cent increase on the previous year, which itself had risen 23 per cent the year before. Public servants spent more than one million hours on FOI work. That's one million hours not spent improving schools, hospitals or community safety yet, despite all that effort, delays keep growing. Applicants wait months, sometimes years, for information that should be routine.

The system is creaking. It is expensive, outdated and increasingly exploited by those who use FOI not to shed light but to throw shade. Freedom of information is meant to strengthen democracy, not to be weaponised against it. But that is what has begun to happen. We now see automated bots generating hundreds of requests in a single day, coordinated campaigns designed to tie up staff and, regrettably, abusive behaviour directed at public servants. Some of those requests come from offshore and others arrive under false names. In 2024 the eSafety Commissioner received almost 600 automated FOI requests in a short period, diverting an entire team for months. That's not transparency; that is sabotage of the system intended to serve the public. Agencies have also reported requests that have exposed staff to harassment. Personal email addresses and phone numbers have been published online. Transparency does not mean putting public servants in the firing line. It means accountability with civility and openness with safety.

This bill modernises the FOI framework from top to bottom. It balances three objectives: to protect the rights of Australians to access government information, to protect the people who administer that right and to make the system efficient and secure in the digital age. The amendments implement recommendations of the 2013 Hawke review, respond to the 2023 Senate inquiry and address issues exposed by the 2024 full court decision in Attorney-General v Patrick. They also reflect advice from the National Intelligence Community and the Australian Public Service Commission about the growing risks of anonymous and automated requests. First, the bill gives agencies stronger tools to deal with vexatious, repetitive and abusive requests. It empowers agencies to refuse requests made in bad faith or that are designed to harass staff while preserving the applicant's right to seek review through the Information Commissioner. It removes the ability to lodge anonymous or pseudonymous FOI claims. Applicants must identify themselves and, if acting for someone else, declare that fact.

This closes a major security gap. Anonymous requests have been used by foreign actors to test government systems and gather data that can be pieced together for intelligence purposes. It also stops those who hide behind fake names from issuing threats or abusing to public servants. The bill introduces new protections for employee-identifying information, ensuring that personal details like names and direct emails are not automatically released unless disclosure is genuinely in the public interest. Senior executive officers remain subject to scrutiny, but junior staff, who carry out decisions rather than make them, will no longer have their personal details spread online. Transparency must never come at the cost of personal safety.

Second, the bill brings FOI into the digital era. It modernises how requests, reviews and complaints are handled, allowing for electronic forms, online submission and clear communication with applicants. It gives the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the OAIC, flexibility to manage matters digitally rather than through outdated paper processes. It allows agencies to continue accessing requests even when statutory timelines have elapsed, ending the stop-start paralysis that currently occurs when a deadline is missed. It moves from calendar days to working days, aligning the act with modern administrative practice. These are practical, commonsense updates, the kind any efficient organisation would make.

Third, the bill restores balance by introducing a 40-hour processing time cap on individual requests. This means one request cannot consume hundreds of staff hours while others wait indefinitely. Applicants whose requests exceed that cap can narrow the scope, discuss priorities or appeal. The cap is not a barrier. It is a safeguard to ensure the system serves everyone, not just the loudest voice. The bill also allows modest application fees for non-personal information, with waivers for financial hardship. Access to one's own records, such as a Medicare or a Centrelink file, remains free. Charging a small fee for large or commercial requests helps manage costs and discourages speculative or automated bulk lodgements.

Fourth, this bill resolves several grey areas that have fuelled confusion and litigation. It clarifies what constitutes a cabinet document, reinforcing the confidentiality that underpins collective ministerial responsibility. It refines the deliberative process exemption, providing clearer guidance on what internal advice should remain confidential to protect the integrity of decision-making. It ensures that documents belonging to a former minister can be appropriately handled when portfolios change, addressing the uncertainty identified in the Patrick case. It confirms that material stored on government systems that relates purely to a public servant's private affairs—a family email, for instance—is not a document of an agency. These clarifications save time, reduce disputes and bring certainty to both applicants and agencies.

The bill also strengthens the role of the Information Commissioner to ensure faster and more efficient reviews. It allows the commissioner to remit matters back to agencies with directions for reconsideration where that would achieve a quicker, better outcome. It permits reviews to be resolved by agreement between parties without the need for formal written decisions every time. It limits automatic party status in reviews to the applicant and the respondent, while allowing others to apply if genuinely affected. These measures let the OAIC focus on resolution, not red tape.

The objects clause of the FOI Act is being rewritten for the first time in four decades. It will now expressly recognise that, while openness is fundamental, it must operate, as far as possible, consistently with the protection of private interests and the effective operation of government. The balance has always existed in practice. Now it will be clear in law.

These reforms have been carefully tested against Australia's international human rights obligations. They promote the right to privacy under article 17 of the ICCPR by limiting the unnecessary release of employee information. They support the right to freedom of expression under article 19 by keeping genuine public interest information accessible while protecting security and privacy. The application fee framework includes mandatory hardship waivers, ensuring no Australian is priced out of transparency.

The opposition will say this bill limits access. It doesn't. It fixes a system that is collapsing under its own weight. A broken system is not transparency; it is bureaucracy. Under the previous government, delays grew, trust fell and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner was left underresourced. They had nine years to act and did nothing. When secrecy suited them, they kept the blinds drawn. We saw it with robodebt, a scheme cloaked in denial and exposed only by a royal commission. This government is taking the opposite approach. We are fixing the system so that sunlight reaches where it should, efficiently, safely and fairly.

Transparency is not an abstract concept; it matters in the communities we represent. It matters to local journalists in Joondalup, who lodge an FOI to see how a grant is delivered. It matters to a community group in Kingsley seeking information about housing programs. It matters to small business owners in Currambine needing clarity on licensing or tender processes. It matters to advocates in Edgewater and Beldon helping families with disability or aged-care services. And it matters to pensioners in Woodvale waiting for a Centrelink file. A modern FOI serves all of them, people who simply want answers from the government.

This bill complements the broader integrity framework of this government, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, public interest disclosure reforms and the APS Integrity Taskforce. It reflects a belief that integrity and efficiency go hand-in-hand. The amendments reduce duplication between agencies in OAIC so public resources are spent on outcomes, not process. The result will be faster, fewer disputes and better service for applicants. The reforms will deliver modest net savings through administrative efficiencies, but their real value is institutional, restoring confidence in a framework that has lost both speed and credibility. They will ensure FOI officers can do their job without fear of harassment, and reaffirm that transparency and respect for staff can coexist. Some governments hide from scrutiny because they fear it. This government welcomes it because we learn from it. We know sunlight makes systems stronger. We want citizens to ask questions and for answers to come quickly, clearly and safely.

The amendments in this bill do not weaken scrutiny; they make scrutiny work. They give Australians confidence that their right to know is respected and that the system administrating that right is robust and humane. Labor has always strengthened democratic institutions. We introduced the Freedom of Information Act in 1982, the 2010 reform act and the independent Information Commissioner. We established the National Archives and the public interest disclosure scheme. This bill continues in that tradition, ensuring that Australians can trust both the government that serves them and the systems that hold it accountable. In a world of misinformation and deepfakes, the antidote is credible information from credible institutions. A functional FOI system helps deliver that. It shows the state does not fear transparency and that truth does not wait for a whistleblower or a leak. It shows the machinery of government can adapt to the technology of the times, and it shows we can be both open and secure, transparent and accountable without being naive about the risk.

This bill is about trust, balance and modernisation. It brings a 40-year-old law in line with contemporary practice. It protects the Public Service, empowers genuine applicants and restores the integrity of the FOI framework. It ensures freedom of information remains exactly that—freedom with purpose, not freedom with boundaries. Openness without order breeds chaos, and bureaucracy without openness breeds cynicism. The amendments in this bill strike the right balance between the two. They make the system fairer, faster and safer, and will help rebuild confidence in government decision-making, the confidence that comes when Australians know they can see for themselves. This is reform about good government, not politics. It will outlast parliament as all good legislation should. I commend the bill to the House.

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