Gabriel Ng (Menzies, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in favour of the Freedom of Information Bill 2025. The Freedom of Information Act is over 40 years old—even older than me, and that is saying something! In 1982, when the Freedom of Information Act was legislated, the first computers were just being invented, there were no electronic records, and we were on the cusp of entering the first glorious years of the Hawke government. This bill creates the necessary and overdue reform to our freedom of information laws, which are a cornerstone of a transparent and accountable government.

Since its election, the Albanese Labor government have demonstrated time and time again our commitment to restoring trust and integrity in government. We understand that governments must be willing to be open to public scrutiny and answerable to public accountability. The freedom of information regime is vital to the functioning of our democracy. It allows members of the public to better understand government. It provides people the opportunity to obtain personal information held by government agencies, including decision records from Centrelink and immigration and other government services, so that they can understand and, if they feel the need, appeal decisions that have profound effects on their lives—for example, whether or not they are allowed to access family tax benefits or be granted a visa to remain in Australia or be granted access to disability supports. The freedom of information regime also provides an important tool for the press to scrutinise government.

However, our freedom of information laws are no longer fit for purpose. Their outdatedness risks creating an unsustainable impost on public services and public resources as well as on the budget. The sheer volume of electronic records generated by public sector agencies would have been unimaginable for the drafters of the FOI Act. Some requests for freedom of information can be large and complex. There are also increasingly vexatious or frivolous requests. This is exacerbated by the fact that the current FOI laws allow requests to be lodged anonymously, creating the risk that this could be exploited by offshore actors and through the use of Al. We now have agencies like the Department of Home Affairs holding close to one billion records in a single system. In 2023-24, the Commonwealth spent $86.2 million processing FOI requests, which was a 23 per cent increase on the year before. Public servants spent more than one million hours on FOI processing in that year alone. We cannot continue on that trajectory. That is one million hours that these public servants could have spent delivering services to people. This was one million hours not spent on assessing payments, helping veterans, helping migrants, processing visas or helping a business or a community organisation.

When every request, no matter how broad or vexatious or repetitive, must be treated the same way, the system is pulled away from genuine applicants. We also know—and it is time to say this plainly—that FOI is not always being used in the public interest. It is sometimes used as a political tool to tie up agencies. It is sometimes used to harass or contact public servants in unacceptable ways. It is sometimes used anonymously, which creates a serious integrity risk in a world where hostile actors can automate requests on a large scale. The current act did not anticipate any of that. Our job is to fix it.

The bill does not walk away from transparency; it restores it. It restores it by making the system workable again so that real requests can be answered in a reasonable time. It restores it by making sure public money is spent on access to information that Australians actually need, not on administration generated by automated systems or by repeat applicants. It restores it by protecting public servants, who should not have their names and personal details published in ways that expose them to abuse.

The bill does four important things: it modernises the framework, it streamlines access requests, it protects the integrity of cabinet-level decision-making and it implements longstanding recommendations from the 2013 Hawke review that every government since has been told to deal with. First, in regard to modernisation, we are making the foundations of the freedom of information laws fit for purpose. This bill will update the objects of the act so that it is clear that FOI is about both accountable government and effective government. It clarifies what is and is not a document of an agency. If something on a government system is purely personal and has nothing to do with the conduct of public business, it should not be dragged into FOI. This protects staff and keeps the act focused on government work.

Second, it streamlines access. This bill deals with the practical reality that agencies are being swamped. It modernises how FOI and review applications can be lodged with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. That will allow early triage and better digital processing. It ensures that employee-identifying information does not have to be published in every notice or release, except where there is a proper reason. That protects the safety and privacy of staff, which is increasingly important when requests are used to target individuals. We are also tackling abuse of process. Agencies will be able to decline requests that are vexatious, frivolous, harassing or simply an attempt to swamp the system. That power will itself be reviewable by the Information Commissioner so that accountability is preserved.

The bill also ends anonymous FOI applications. An applicant will have to provide their name, and, if they are acting for somebody else, they will have to say so. This is a sensible reform. It prevents misuse, including by offshore actors, and it allows agencies to identify where one person is lodging multiple related requests to overwhelm public services.

The bill deals with practical refusals and the use of public resources. We are clarifying how the existing practical refusal provisions operate and how the Information Commissioner should handle reviews of those decisions. More importantly, it introduces a discretionary 40-hour processing cap, as recommended by the Hawke review. This is a real balance point. Applicants retain the right to seek information and agencies retain the obligation to provide it. However, where a single request would take days and days of an officer's time, the agency can limit it, explain why and then get on with the other important work they do in serving the public. Forty hours is a pretty reasonable amount of time to be able to spend on a single FOI request. This is good administration.

This legislation will also improve the review processes. It stops concurrent internal and Information Commissioner reviews, which only create delay and confusion. It streamlines extensions of time. It confirms that an agency still has to make decisions, even if the deadline has passed, so applicants are not left in limbo—they're not left waiting too long. It also moves timeframes from calendar days to working days, reflecting how the Public Service actually operates. These are small-sounding changes but, together, they remove friction from the system, increase productivity and make the system more efficient.

We are also improving the operation of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The bill gives the Information Commissioner the power to remit matters back to agencies with directions. That means a matter can be fixed where it started, instead of sitting in a long queue. It allows matters to be resolved by agreement, which is faster and cheaper than a full written decision. It limits automatic parties in a review to the applicant and respondent, which removes unnecessary complexity while still allowing affected third parties to apply to join. All of this will allow the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to focus on real disputes and systemic issues instead of procedural clutter.

Another important question is regarding fees. Schedule 6 of the FOI bill allows an application fee to be set in regulations for FOI requests, internal reviews and Information Commissioner reviews. Every other Australian jurisdiction except for the ACT already has some form of fee. The Commonwealth is the outlier here. A modest fee helps to deter frivolous or automated requests that chew up time and money. At the same time, the bill is crystal clear that requests for a person's own personal information will not attract a fee. I'll say that again because I think there has been misinformation on this point: the bill is clear that requests for a person's own personal information will not attract a fee. In 2023-24, around 72 per cent of FOI requests were for personal information, so those requests will not attract a fee. Three out of four requests will still be free. There will be a provision for fee waivers, including for financial hardship. The principle of access is preserved and the principle of responsible use of public resources is also preserved.

I want to turn to cabinet documents, because some on the crossbench and in parts of the community have been raising this. When the FOI Act was first introduced, Senator Durack said, 'The general right of access must be limited for the protection of essential public interest.' That was true in 1981 and it is still true now. Cabinet confidentiality is really important to the proper functioning of government. Ministers must be able to test proposals, disagree, change their minds and finally reach a collective position. If every step of that process is exposed in real time, cabinet becomes performance not deliberation, advice becomes cautious, and collective responsibility weakens. Schedule 7 therefore clarifies the cabinet exemption so it protects what it is meant to protect and only that. It responds to the 2023 royal commission into the robodebt scheme, which identified that simply putting the word 'cabinet' on a document is not enough. This bill makes that plain. The content and the purpose of the document determine whether the exemption applies, not a label. That is a fair outcome. It protects cabinet where necessary and it prevents the misuse of the exemption. This is an important clarification of a term that has been ambiguous for a long time.

Finally, this bill deals with what happens when a minister leaves office or changes portfolio. There has been uncertainty since the recent Federal Court decision. The bill sets out practical processes so outgoing ministers can facilitate access and so incoming ministers are not put in the position of deciding on sensitive material from a previous government. That respects long-standing convention and it gives applicants certainty.

This bill is not about making it harder for Australians to get information; it is about making it possible for Australians to get information in a system that is being overwhelmed by claims that do not reflect the genuine needs of members of the community to have access to documents regarding personal information, that do not reflect the genuine needs of the press to properly scrutinise government and that do not reflect the genuine needs of members of the community and community organisations to better understand government decisions.

As I said before, for the number of requests we receive, the amount of resources that are going into meeting these requests is not sustainable. It is increasing at a significant rate, and we want to make sure public resources are used for what they are supposed to be used for. It's also about protecting public servants, keeping up with technology and making sure that FOI in 2025 and the years to come looks like a tool of democracy and not a tool of disruption. Transparency must work in practice, not only in theory.

The bill delivers that. It modernises the act, implements the Hawke review, future-proofs the system against automated abuse and keeps personal access free for the vast majority of applicants. It makes reviews faster. More importantly, it puts genuine applicants back at the centre of the FOI system. That is what good government looks like. It's transparent, accessible and effective. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Merely a couple of days ago I was in this chamber trying to get information on an incredibly sensitive topic. I was trying to get clarification. What happened is that we didn't get that clarification. By reason of that, a whole heap of innuendo and presumption—vexed and invective—became part of it. It was a highly sensitive topic. It was whether a piece of legislation from this place went beyond the initial remit—what it intended to do. It was Priya's Bill to look after people who have had a stillbirth or traumatic circumstances where their child has died. Did it actually go to a place of involving also late-term abortions? The reason those questions are asked in the chamber is because we can't get answers. We'd never proceed to a place like here if we could actually get the answer. But we can't.

What we have to deal with is the juxtaposition of people with completely different views all contacting our offices. The reason FOI is so important is that we need to be able to get to the bottom of issues on behalf of the Australian people when there's a deliberate evasiveness of governments—whether it's us or them—not providing that information. They don't provide that information, because it protects a purpose that is unbeknownst to us but obviously is there. FOIs have a whole range of nuisances, but they are essential. We've heard about issues that are vexatious, frivolous, harassing or competitive. I get all that. But sometimes the price of us having a transparent democracy is dealing with those impediments or at least going to the process of a proper Senate inquiry, so we can facilitate a better outcome than one that is foisted on us here at the moment.

When governments become too powerful, they immediately start to cover their tracks. This is a sign of a government that is becoming too powerful and managing to act basically without question. If you want to see the tenor or authenticity of a government that is not scared of the truth, you'll never get a better place than question time, where, in answer to an obvious question, we get the most classic example of obfuscation, belittling and theatre but never an answer. When people see that on television and say: 'That is the approach of government to a question that has been asked and that, whether you like it or not, I had the right to watch on question time. And they never answered it.' And then you have an earnest view of a government that says, 'Look, we've also got to go into FOI laws, because we're well meaning, and we'd never do anything wrong.' Then, of course, people say: 'But I watch you every day and you don't answer questions. Why do you make it harder for us?' Journalists are the fourth estate. A democracy does not work without the fourth estate. Knowing one journalist very well—my wife—they rely on FOIs. They do so because their job is to convey to the wider community the truth and the realities of what is happening in this building.

Now, once you get rid of FOIs, you shut down the capacity for the Australian people to graze on the truth. Then they have to graze on suspicions, they have to graze on innuendo and they have to graze on rumour, because they cannot get to the truth. It was Pulitzer who said:

There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.

The great thing about democracies which differentiates us from socialist states and communist states—North Korea, Russia, China, Vietnam; take your pick—is that we believe in the transparency of the actions of the government. They are beholden. Our judgement on them is by us getting a free flow of information back for the assessment of their character and their efficacy, and that's on the range of all issues. What we're seeing here is a corralling: 'You'll get information for that, but you won't get it for this, because we've deemed that you shouldn't get access to that information.' That is a very dangerous thing to do.

I want to take you to an area which is very close to my heart. This is so evident. There are things called capacity investment schemes. They are, apparently, secret agreements where proponents—domestic billionaires and foreign companies, such as PETROS and BP—get paid a secret amount by the government to build an intermittent power precinct, which I call 'swindle factories'. We hear that there is a return of up to 18 per cent. That's a lot of money. So they build a billion-dollar swindle factory. They get an equivalent return of about 18 per cent. That is $180 million a year, and here's the clicker: they don't have to produce an electron; it's underwritten. Ninety per cent of the returns are underwritten by the taxpayer.

Now, I really want to get to the bottom of this. This is the taxpayers' money and the pensioners' pain. But you can't get it, because it's hidden. It's a secret. So you go to the budget papers, thinking that you'd have to find it there because that is an authentic demonstration of how the taxpayers' money is being spent. But when you go to budget papers it's NFP, not for publication. In the meantime, you're thinking that this sounds like a rort. It sounds like a swindle or a massive rort—people can get this massive return if they just invest the most expensive capital they can possibly get their hands on in every square inch of land that's eligible. And that is exactly what is happening.

So that's happening now, and we're going to put even further restrictions on it. If the government was straightforward and transparent and had nothing to worry about, when we ask questions like, 'Can you please tell us how these capacity investment schemes work? Just give us the top 10 in returns. You can take the names out, but just give us a bit of an understanding about where the taxpayers' money's going.' But you won't get it.

And there's other information. There's information that's come out today. We're going to get three hours of free power in the middle of the day. Where did this come from? Who dreamt this up? Where did the modelling for this come from? There's no trick to this, is there? Is it the case that, if you're really wealthy and you can store it in a battery in the middle of the day, you'll get if for free, but if you're really poor and you have to come home at night to cook your dinner and maybe put an air conditioner on, you are going to pay an awful lot of money? One of the things they talked about was that it will help you charge your electric car. Well, guess who owns electric cars? Wealthy people own electric cars. Poor people own second-hand internal combustion engine cars.

We have a right to know where you got this information from. There is yet another thing. I was just listening to Matt Kean. When you can't get the truth, people can get away with anything. Matt Kean was on television just then. He said the majority of the global GDP is heading towards net zero. That is not the truth; that is something that starts with L and rhymes with stye—like pigsty. It's not the truth. I know that because I researched it. I know that China doesn't even have to think about it until 2030. Neither does India. The United States of America is out, and other countries aren't in. But because he comes from a position of authority and he's on television, people say, 'Well, it must be the truth.' It's the job of the fourth estate to go: 'Hang on; I don't think that is the truth. I will go and investigate it. Investigative journalism is very important. I will go and investigate that, and I will convey back to the Australian people where the truth lies.' Rather than convey where the truth lies, this has lying imitating truth. That is not what should be happening.

This bill should be stopped. At the very least, since you're honourable, truthful people, you should refer it to a joint committee so that you could bring forward what are probably very valid issues that you need to deal with, such as repetition, vexatiousness, harassment, 'swamping'—I understand that. Come forward so that the whole of Australia can see that there is a bipartisan or multifaceted approach to examination of this issue that is absolutely fundamental to where a democracy goes, and then they would believe that there was more truth and veracity in what would be put forward in a bill subsequent to that report from that committee.

But we have a partisan approach to a fundamental concept of democracy that is being put forward by a government which, God bless them, have massive numbers. They are now exercising those numbers so as to entrench their capacity to stay in government. They know that if they can stop you finding out the facts, then you cannot find the fault. And if you cannot fault the fault, your default position, when you vote, is, 'They must be going okay because I haven't heard anything else.' That's a step—a big step—away from how a democracy is supposed to work.

The previous speaker, the member for Menzies, mentioned how it was the same as when Hawke was there. Just because it's the same, doesn't mean it's wrong. It probably means it's been working. With the capacity for the administration of these requests, and rather than the IQ going into how you just don't do them anymore, you could be looking at the things that are available to you, such as AI, and saying: 'How can we be more efficacious? How can we make these things happen quicker? If they request that, why don't we just get the information out to them?' Create a portal, with the premise of AI, and they can just get the information. If you've got nothing to fear about the truth then you should have nothing to fear about creating a mechanism that gives you the information immediately.

Now we have this payment system—democracy for sale. And we've seen actual examples of this, where people are trying to deal with the intermittent power precincts, trying to get information, and having to pay hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars for basic information about the circumstances of what has happened to them in their community. Then they're being given email links, and getting documents which are totally redacted: 'Dear redaction, redaction, redaction, redaction, redaction, redaction, redaction, Yours sincerely, redaction.' That's like—I don't know. Kampuchea? I don't know what that is. That's a complete defrauding of the democratic process.

People should be really concerned about the path this heading down. You might say it's innocuous at this point of time, but be careful, really careful, of going down this path of removing people's access to knowing things about their nation. That's exactly what happens in the end. You are removing the capacity to know about your nation and, therefore, leaving, untethered, the capacity for a government, which is very powerful in numbers, to do as it wishes—and the wishes of a government may be completely at odds with the wishes that are best for your nation.

Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 to reform the Freedom of Information Act, which is well overdue, necessary and grounded in one simple democratic principle: the public has a right to know. Freedom of information laws sit at the heart of a functioning democracy. They create transparency, they forward accountability, and they ensure that government at every level remembers who we serve—that is, the people.

I had the opportunity to hear the member for New England's speech on the amendment bill, and I want to quote something he said tonight. He said, 'When a government becomes too powerful, it covers its tracks.' Now, I'm not going to listen to advice from a member who was part of a former government that provided multiple secret ministerial portfolios to a former prime minister. For me, transparency is not an abstract principle. It is a lived value that all Australians expect that governments of the day will uphold.

Before entering this house, I spent a decade working in employment and industrial relations law. In that role, I stood next to working people like nurses and electricians—people who relied on accurate information to stand up for their rights. I've seen firsthand that, when transparency fails, working people lose power, and, when systems become confusing, slow or difficult, it is everyday Australians who are left behind. FOI is no different.

Access to government information empowers our communities. It builds trust. It gives people confidence that public institutions serve them, not themselves. Yet we must also be honest. The FOI framework as it stands today is not working as intended—not for government, not for public servants and certainly not for the public.

When the FOI Act came into force over 40 years ago, the Public Service did not operate in the world we live in today. There was no email inbox overflow every morning, there were no digital archives holding decades of communications, and there were no thousands of pages generated every week across government offices. Back then, the volume of public sector records and the pace at which information moves now would have been unimaginable. Today, by contrast, the government receives over 34,000 FOI requests each year, and departments and agencies spend more than one million hours processing them annually—and it comes at a cost.

Last financial year alone, FOI processing cost government more than $86 million, a 23 per cent increase on the year before and more than double what it cost in 2010-11. That is taxpayers' money. That is Public Service time and capability. That is not sustainable without reform. If we do not modernise this system, we'll continue to choke it, we'll continue to see delays and we'll continue to see resources diverted away from public delivery and into administrative gridlock. Worst of all, genuine requests from the public, whether it be journalists, researchers, academics or community advocates, will be pushed to the back of the queue, crowded out by unreasonable or abusive demands.

We must protect FOI, but in order to protect FOI we must also protect the integrity of the system that underpins it. We know that over recent years, FOI has increasingly been used not as a tool for accountability but as a tool for harassment or disruption. Public servants who've simply turned up to do their job to serve the community have been subjected to abusive, threatening and excessive FOI requests designed not to seek truth but to intimidate or distract. Agencies have been weighed down by overly broad or malicious requests that consume enormous time and resources without delivering public value.

As an employment lawyer and someone who's had the opportunity to work in operations as well—at St Vincent de Paul—I understand the balancing of WHS operational challenges and protecting workers in their duties. It is paramount that government be a role model for balancing protections for workers with accountability expectations from the community. While government must always be accountable, no system should tolerate abuse of workers, resources or processes. We are here to ensure transparency, not enable harassment. There has to be a balance. Accountability cannot come at the expense of safety or function.

The reforms before us recognise this balance. They modernise the FOI system. They make it fairer, clearer and more efficient. They restore the intention of the act to provide access to information for those genuinely seeking it. Let me outline a couple of key features. Firstly, the reform modernises how requests are made and processed. We live in a digital age; our laws must meet this reality. Secondly, it ends anonymous FOI requests. Transparency cuts both ways. The public deserve transparency from government, and government deserves transparency about who is requesting sensitive information, particularly where national security may be at risk. Thirdly, it ensures decision-makers have adequate time to handle complex requests so that responses are accurate the first time instead of rushed or flawed. Fourthly, it introduces processing caps and the ability to change modest application fees for non-personal information, with waivers for financial hardship. Almost every Australian jurisdiction currently has an initial FOI application fee. This is not about shutting the door on transparency, like we hear from those across the chamber. It is about keeping the door open for genuine users by preventing the system from being overwhelmed. Fifthly, it provides agencies the ability to manage vexatious requests without removing the applicant's right to make future FOI requests. This is proportionate. This is absolutely fair. Sixthly, it clarifies legal ambiguities, especially following the full court's decision in the case of Patrick v Attorney-General, ensuring conventions around cabinet confidentiality and transitions between government are preserved. Ministerial deliberations must be protected. Cabinet confidentiality must be protected. Otherwise, collective responsibility, a core pillar of our Westminster system, will begin to collapse.

These reforms do not weaken accountability. They safeguard the integrity of decision-making while guaranteeing the public's legitimate right to information. The FOI Act was created to shine a light on government, not to bury it under paper, not to threaten its workers and not to compromise its ability to deliver services. This bill brings clarity where there has been a bit of confusion. It brings structure where there has been strain. And, critically, it brings a balance that recognises both the rights of citizens and the responsibilities of government. We must never discourage scrutiny, and we must never shy away from transparency. But we must also ensure that FOI remains a system for accountability, not attrition.

I know members opposite may raise concerns about restricting access or imposing barriers. I say this very clearly: a broken system serves nobody. These reforms give FOI longevity, they ensure public access remains quite meaningful and they ensure genuine requests are prioritised. And, yes, they ensure public money and public time is used responsibly, not drained by a handful of abusive or extreme demands while journalists, community members and advocates wait months or sometimes years to get an answer.

Our commitment to transparency is not negotiable. Our commitment to accountable government is not negotiable. These reforms do not walk away from those commitments. They absolutely strengthen them. They ensure FOI remains a tool for democracy, not a weapon against it. They ensure the system supports fairness, not frustration, and they honour the foundational principle that government information belongs to the people, it belongs to the public, it belongs to us as Australians, and access to that information must be real and reliable.

The strongest democracies are those that evolve. They recognise when systems strain, and they adjust to modern realities with integrity and purpose. This bill is not about closing doors. It's about keeping them open and functional for generations to come. This Labor Albanese government and the FOI reforms are focused on delivering for the Australian people. I commend the bill to the House.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start by acknowledging the member for Barton and congratulating her on her election to the House. I don't doubt for one second that the spirit in which she offered her remarks was well intentioned and based on the trust that she has in this government. The problem is that that's not actually its practice. I understand when you're a member of the government, particularly when you're new and you want to feel that your government, which you have been elected to support, is trying to do the right thing. But, as always occurs with all governments, eventually its true face is revealed, and what we're seeing more and more with time is the dark face of the Albanese government as the mask slips. The seemingly well-meaning Prime Minister, who likes to have a beer at the pub—although he actually did do that when he was claiming he wasn't doing that, but that's a whole separate issue. In the lead-up to the 2022 election, I remember seeing him explicitly saying one thing in public and doing something completely different, but we'll leave that to one side.

Ever since then, what we've seen through the legislation that has been put before this parliament is the mask slipping, and we're increasingly seeing the contemptuous quiver of his lip in a 'how dare you, Australian people, question me?' as he periodically jaunts back in from trips on his Air Force jet between visiting Dan Andrews in Victoria or going overseas. He comes back from the National People's Congress and thinks, 'That would be a really good model to impose on the Parliament of Australia, where people just stand and applaud like trained eunuchs and don't ask or dare raise questions.' And this legislation around freedom of information comfortably fits within that.

Anyone who's submitted an FOI under this government or, more importantly, under other Labor governments in the country will know how much, on the surface of it, they talk about integrity and they spin the idea that they're in favour of transparency, but, in practice, they weaponise and use it at every point to try and undermine access to information. I'll give you a classic example of this. I FOI'd the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing many, many months ago asking for information about an MRI machine at Sandringham Hospital—Sandringham Hospital, of course, being in the federal electorate of Goldstein. I remember, in 2017, when we were last in government, an MRI licence was secured for the federal electorate of Goldstein. Many people said to me: 'Why didn't you get one for Sandringham Hospital? Why did you get it for Cabrini hospital in Brighton?' The answer was because Sandringham Hospital doesn't have an MRI machine. It's not much use getting an MRI licence for a hospital that doesn't have an MRI machine you can use it on. So it was with fascination that, during the lead-up to the last federal election, the former member for Goldstein was boasting to the community about how she got this magnificent MRI licence for Sandringham Hospital. I thought, 'That's really odd because, as far as I'm aware, the website alfredhealth.org.au still says it doesn't have an MRI machine. Of course, I then dutifully went to foi@health.gov.au with one of these mischievous FOIs—'How dare people submit?' I asked the basic questions: Could I have the advice that was given to the department at the time? Could you give me information reflecting what their decision-making and their pricing structure were on whether this should be passed? And what did the research and FOI documents actually show? They showed the department saying, 'Actually it's quite easy to calculate the cost of bringing forward the MRI licence for Sandringham Hospital because there's no MRI machine.' So what they engaged in was a cruel health hoax that deliberately deceived the people of Goldstein in order to prop up the former member in the hope that they would then go on and get re-elected. It was to help their own electoral fortunes and chances.

So does FOI have a place? Yes, it has a role to expose the deception and the dishonesty at the heart of this government and, of course, of any government that seeks to abuse power. The minister was specifically warned. Even worse than that is that the FOI went in many months ago and we waited and waited and waited for an answer. Do you know when they released the answer? Do you know when they finally gave out the documents? They finally gave out the documents on the Friday evening after the bureaucrats were forced to admit, before Senate estimates, everything I've just said. They weaponised and they abused freedom of information to hide information until they could hide it no longer. That is what Minister Butler does. That is what the Prime Minister does. They weaponise laws to shut down access to information for the people of Australia.

We've now got this piece of legislation, the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025, and we know that the Attorney-General is trying to suffocate and silence what is left of the democracy in our country in terms of access to information. We know that she is trying to deceive the public, and they are using the most fantastical and farcical arguments to get there. The argument that is now being put forward by the Prime Minister is that we have to shut down the pathways of freedom to information for ordinary Australians because there might be things to do with national security and the cabinet. I hate to break it to you, but, if you've ever read the FOI Act, you will know that it already excludes all of the information around our national security. They say that the last resort of a scoundrel is to appeal to national security or patriotism. Well, this government is clearly full of those types of characters.

They have simply deceived the public in the hope that they can ram this through and impose their truth tax to shut down and silence information and to cap the volume of information that Australians can get. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. They haven't consulted. They haven't engaged. There are so many transparency organisations and anticorruption organisations. There's the opposition and the crossbench, who are increasingly seeing the dark face of this government. They're seeing the mask slip when the Prime Minister gets up in question time—when he occasionally answers questions rather than, with a quiver of his lip, shouting abuse back in response. They're starting to see what happens when you have a government that's let the intoxication of power go to its head. It's worse than, let's say, a few beers once you've frozen the excise.

What we know is they're shutting down transparency and democratic accountability. I gave an example of what's going on at the local hospital in the federal electorate of Goldstein. They're imposing new fees and processing caps to try and silence and limit access to journalists so they won't be able to find out information. They're trying to minimise the capacity for people to get information, like whistleblowers and vulnerable applicants, because that's what we really need right now. We need more pathways to silence whistleblowers. Why do you think that might be? Do think it might be because, at the moment, we have whistleblowers who are standing up and calling out the CFMEU and their administration established by Minister Rishworth and calling out that corruption is actually getting worse under the current government's proposal? Their solution is to shut down whistleblowers, to silence dissent and to challenge anybody who stands up and calls out corruption at the heart of this government. They do not want these voices to be heard, because they know it's not just getting worse but likely to continue to get worse under this regime.

They want to expand secrecy around cabinet advice because apparently there's this explosion of cabinet advice. It's just all around. You can go and pick it up. There are pieces of paper all around. It's all over the place. So they have to try and somehow minimise it. Cabinet advice isn't publicly available. The idea that they need to somehow constrain this further is farcical. They are using it to try and expand it so that now ministers can walk through and say, 'It went through the cabinet room. Now it's cabinet advice, so you can't access it,' to try to continue to create silence and limit the amount of available information. They're putting caps on the volume of information you're able to secure and the processing times. What a surprise. Do you think it's possible, Deputy Speaker Boyce, they might turn around and simply say, 'I think it's going to take a while for us to process this information in between my coffee break, going to the bathroom, lunch.'? It will get longer and longer and then all of a sudden they will say, 'We can't give that information; it's too long to process.' Get real.

The intention of this legislation is clear. The attempt of this government to silence and shut down public scrutiny is real. When you have a truth tax, when you have silencing and the limiting of information, and you see the example of their conduct in other arenas such as the CFMEU administration, where the minister still takes advice from somebody who self declares they are so tainted they cannot sit on the national executive of the Labor Party yet they still hold that person as an advisor on the national construction industry forum—and, funnily enough, that minister is still blocking a public inquiry through the Senate into CFMEU corruption into the regime she has established—you start to see the cartel kickback circle of life. This is the problem.

This legislation, in theory, is designed to do what the government claim, which is simply to administratively tidy up the law. In practice, it is a backdoor attack on our democracy and it needs to be called out because it will reward delay and dysfunction at every step of the way. It lacks public support. I have yet to find a single person outside this Albanese government who supports it. Nobody is coming up to me in the street and saying, 'I really support how the government is shutting down freedom of information. I think it is a wonderful thing.' Not a single person has said that; though people have said the reverse. People have said, 'I don't think it's a good idea.' Journalists, members of the opposition, members of the crossbench, anybody who has actually thought about what this government are doing in their insidious agenda have said it. It goes directly against the proposition this government came to office in, saying they would have integrity and be fulsome in providing information to the public. We all know that is complete fantasy now. It was a proposition put at the time but nobody actually believes that. I don't think they even believe it themselves, but I would not want to verbal them; they should just be ashamed by their conduct.

More importantly, what the legislation actually does is damage public trust, because around this country we have so many Australians that already have deep distrust in institutions. The one surefire way to guarantee that is to shut them down and limit access and accountability, to make it even harder for agencies to be held accountable not just from the public and journalists but from ministers themselves, certainly from parliamentary processes. If the minister and members opposite were so enthused and so enthralled by standing up for public scrutiny and accountability, the first thing they could do is start by saying that a lot of these rules simply should not apply to those people elected to public office to hold the government specifically to account, and certainly to journalists whose job it is to shine bright lights into very dark crevices. But let's face it, nobody wants to know what is going on in the dark crevices of this government.

We have increasing bureaucracy and legal complexity deliberately designed to obfuscate and make it more complicated to be able to find information, and for what purpose apart from the secrecy this government seeks to impose? There is a better way. We can conserve the existing laws. There is no national security threat despite the pontificating of the Prime Minister, who has come back from overseas and too often is trying to find justifications to shut down accountability around this parliament, the government and the operations of the Commonwealth of Australia. We can have a better way. We can have laws that work to enable access to information, that give people access to the information they need to be able to hold this government to account. We don't need to indulge the fantasies of the Albanese government and those who wilfully come into this chamber with the delusion of thinking they are doing the right thing, when in fact they are entrenching the corrupt government system they claim they are seeking to oppose.

We have choices as a nation about the type of country we want to be, and we want to be one focused on making sure there is transparency, accountability and decision-making, because it is important not just for the ministers but for the bureaucrats themselves that they understand through the systems of government there is accountability for their decision-making. Nobody should be embarrassed by the process of making decisions. It is about making sure they are properly informed, that they are properly respected and that people have input into the processes of government.

It is the right of every Australian to ask challenging and difficult questions to their government. I hate to break this to the members of the government: the people have a government; it is not the other way around. Citizens have a government; it is not the other way around. We are not your serfs. Our job is not to comply. Your job is not to control the citizens of this country.

It comes down to a simple proposition: we face choices. The choice is simple. I fundamentally believe that we should have legislation that improves this country and the governance framework that we have. That means we build a better future for children and our grandchildren and we do not hand to them a state of silence, as the Albanese government would like to achieve. We stand for a nation that is built on structures and the protection of accountability, and that means making sure we stop these types of bad laws.

Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We no longer have a quorum, so the Federation Chamber is suspended until a quorum is present.

Sitting suspended from 18:05 to 18:11

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wasn't going to use my last 28 seconds, but since I'm still here I can't resist the temptation, because that has just demonstrated exactly what happens. This Labor government has no interest in accountability. At every single point they have tried to shutdown pathways, including in this chamber. I still remember at question time today, when I got up to ask a question about the corruption at the heart of the CFMEU, the only thing the Prime Minister had to say was to shut down question time.

Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Freedom of Information is an essential part of any democracy. The public must have a clearly defined legal right to access information held by the government, and the process to access that information must be transparent and easy to use. Scrutiny, review, measurement, testing, debating of government actions and decisions—there are many words that can be used, but these things must be protected. Openness must be practised, and public participation in that practice must be easily facilitated. Individual members of the public must also be able to easily access information about themselves that is held by the government, in order to have knowledge of what that information is but also to be able to change it, add to it or correct it as required. First and foremost, however, empowering the public to hold the government to account is fundamental.

This openness and accessibility must, however, be balanced with a number of factors, including confidentiality and sensitivity of certain information, and balanced against the allocation of available resources to properly deal with requests for information made by the public. Vital to a healthy and well-functioning democracy, a fundamental aspect of the rule of law, crucial to ensuring government transparency and accountability, and essential to enabling the public to participate in and scrutinise government decision-making, this balance is part of a well-functioning freedom of information system. The Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 would amend the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to improve the operation of the freedom of information framework through reducing system inefficiencies, providing clarity of the law and addressing abuse of processes that impact on people's right to access information.

Prior to being elected to federal parliament, I was a practising lawyer for 20 years. I held a number of different roles around the world, and in Australia, in private practice and in-house for companies and government business enterprises. In one of my more recent in-house roles before parliament, the responsibility of addressing third-party freedom of information requests received from members of the public fell to me. So I can attest firsthand to just how complicated it can be to properly and fairly respond to a freedom of information request, particularly with respect to section 47C and its coverage of material falling under the umbrella of deliberative processes and also with respect to section 11B and its, frankly, currently inadequate description of the public interest disclosure test. Clarity in this respect is long overdue. In another recent role prior to parliament, I was a partner in a law firm where we represented certain government clients. Clarity over what information qualifies for the cabinet exemption is long overdue.

I can also attest firsthand to the time that it takes to address freedom of information requests, which, often, when I received them, amounted to nothing more than an exercise in exploration, usually off the back of an ill-informed sound bite floating around the internet. Sometimes it took weeks to respond to these sorts of requests because, when you get one, you want to address it properly. It's not just a case of responding; it's a case of searching through reams and reams of electronic data in order to locate documentation that might possibly be responsive to an overly broad request which is often lacking in any temporal limitation. The rate and volume of electronic records generated today by public sector agencies would have been almost unimaginable when the Freedom of Information Act was first introduced some 40 years ago.

For legal practitioners and members of the Public Service who work tirelessly to advise on freedom of information legislation and respond to requests in the spirit of transparency and integrity, the amendments proposed by this bill will simplify matters considerably. The public will have greater clarity over the process by which they can make freedom of information requests and how they are dealt with and greater clarity over what is exempt from disclosure and what is not and, most importantly, why that is so. Importantly, through the implementation of a small fee, which is already replicated across most states and territories in this country, the public will have it reinforced that freedom of information is critical but also a two-way street. Governments should be held accountable and the public should have access to information and the ability to easily request that information, but government resources—being time and taxpayer money—should not be tied up addressing vexatious and speculative freedom of information requests that have no basis other than in rumour, misinformation or innuendo.

In terms of a critical feature of this bill, it will operate to clarify the public interest test as it relates to matter covered under the deliberative process. Section 47C of the Freedom of Information Act operates to provide that a document is conditionally exempt—not exempt but conditionally exempt—if its disclosure under the act would disclose deliberative matter, which is matter in the nature of or relating to opinion, advice or recommendation obtained, prepared or recorded, or consultation or deliberation which has taken place in the course of or for the purposes of the deliberative processes involved in the functions of an agency or a minister or government of the Commonwealth.

What ultimately happens to a document that section 47C may have relevance to is a three-stage process. Firstly, the decision-maker must be satisfied that the information in question does actually involve deliberative matter. Then, the decision-maker must ascertain whether the information was obtained and the purpose for which it was prepared, and how it has been documented or recorded—was there a deliberative process involving the exercise of judgement and the weighing-up and evaluation of competing arguments and considerations? Those are the first two stages. Then, finally, the decision-maker must also be satisfied that the information relates to a deliberative function and that that function was or was intended to be exercised by an agency, a minister or the Commonwealth government. It's not a free pass; the information must pass all three stages in order to determine that it is deliberative matter. Then, and only then, a conditional exemption from disclosure applies. That conditional exemption is then further examined. It's either crystallised or removed subject to the public interest test, as set out in section 11B of the act. This section applies for the purposes of working out whether access to a conditionally exempt document would, on balance, be contrary to the public interest.

Currently, section 11B lists the factors that favour access or, in other words, that favour the lifting of the conditional exemption. These include whether access to the document would do any of the following: promote the object of the act; inform debate on a matter of public importance; promote effective oversight of public expenditure; or allow a person to access his or her own personal information. There are no proposed changes to this

Equally and very importantly, there are no proposed changes to section 11B(4), which sets out factors that are not to be taken into consideration in determining whether access to the document would, on balance, be contrary to the public interest. The first matter—and this is important as we have heard suggestions to the contrary today—that is not to be taken into account is whether access to the document could result in embarrassment to the Commonwealth government or cause a loss of confidence in the Commonwealth government. These things do not matter for the purposes of the act. They are irrelevant in determining whether access to the document is in the public interest. This regime exists in the act and it is not changing.

Also irrelevant is whether access to the document could result in any person misinterpreting or misunderstanding the document or whether the author of the document was, or still is, of high seniority in the agency to which the request for access to the document was made. The final factor that is irrelevant to the public interest consideration is whether access to the document could result in confusion or unnecessary debate. Article 11B(4) is critical, and I encourage everyone to read it. It is remaining and is not proposed to be amended by this bill.

The act currently explains the factors in favour of disclosure and the factors that are irrelevant. What it does not do currently is set out the factors against disclosure. All this bill proposes to do is clarify those actions. They include whether access would prejudice the frank or timely provision of advice to or by an agency or minister and whether it would prejudice the orderly and effective conduct of a government decision-making process. The chamber will note that the list of those factors is neither extensive nor arbitrary and that they would apply in very limited circumstances.

We have heard a lot today about the cabinet exemption, which is also being amended to clarify its operation. Firstly, it will be amended to clarify that merely labelling a document as a cabinet document is not enough to make it a cabinet document. The amendments proposed by the bill in this respect ensure that information central to the cabinet process is appropriately protected and ensure that the principle of collective ministerial responsibility is not undermined, noting that this principle is crucial to ensuring that full and frank debate can take place within cabinet. The act currently does not contain scope to apply the public interest test to the cabinet exemption, and the bill does not propose to introduce this. The public interest is implicit in the purpose of the exemption itself. We have heard today that it will be enough to mark a document 'cabinet' to qualify for the exemption. This is not correct. There still remains a test for whether a cabinet document is exempt, and that test is the substantive purpose test. In order to qualify for the exemption, the substantive purpose of the document must be for cabinet processes. Simply labelling it as a cabinet submission on the face of the document will not make it qualify, and any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect.

The amendments proposed by the bill also propose to improve transparency by removing the ability to make anonymous requests. Together with the implementation of the reasonable fee, which, importantly, does not relate to requests that individual Australians make in relation to their own personal information, the requirement for an applicant to faithfully identify themselves is again designed to reduce the number of vexatious and ill-motivated requests that the Australian Public Service and other relevant third parties have to spend countless hours and taxpayer money dealing with.

It's also quite obviously very important for there to be transparency about who is asking for information. Risks to national security may arise if requesters can make requests for information anonymously. And national security risks can only be identified and managed with information. These changes do not inhibit the provision of information to those who have genuine reasons to access information. This is not changing. But the increase in freedom of information processing costs to agencies is increasing to unsustainable levels. In the 2023-24 financial year, agencies spent $86.24 million and one million hours addressing 34,000 freedom of information requests, some of which were maliciously used to attempt to disrupt business or to make abusive, excessive or threatening contact with public servants. There are not inexhaustible government resources available to process large and complex requests, or to have processed requests that are abusive to people and abuse government processes.

The fee for access, which I again stress does not apply to personal information, is not, as has been described, a 'truth tax'. It's not that. It's designed to reduce the number of vexatious requests that are made each year, and that detract from those with credible, genuine requests from having those requests addressed promptly.

The bill provides important clarity to how and when information can be accessed. It addresses the oft-used abuses of process that impact on people's right to access information, and demonstrates the importance of a highly functioning and transparent system of information access balanced with an efficient and effective government and balanced with the public interest. I commend the bill to the House.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition opposes this bill, but I do want to make some remarks about the contribution of the previous speaker, the member for Sturt. It was a thoughtful contribution. I respect her as a lawyer and I absolutely admire some of the points that she put across based on her experience in that law firm. When she mentioned the vexatious and speculative freedom of information request based on rumour, misinformation and innuendo, she was 100 per cent right. The member for Sturt was absolutely spot on, so thank you for those very wise words.

Having said all that, you'd wonder why I would then say that we are opposing the bill, but we are, and I will tell you why in the contribution that I will make. I want to hark on the facts that the member for Sturt put forward in relation to my three-and-one-third years in cabinet as the Deputy Prime Minister and as the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development. At the time, I oversaw a $110 billion—110 thousand million dollars—rollout for projects, programs and infrastructure across this nation. They were heady times. We got a lot done. Yet, most of the FOI request that came to my office and to the departments in that time were from the Labor Party. They were. They were generally from the chairs of committees. Some of them were from joint select committees. I had the member for Grayndler as the infrastructure shadow. I had the member for Ballarat as a shadow for some time. Rest assured, you knew when stakeholder groups were being primed and prompted by those two formidable members of parliament; it just jumped out at you from the pages of the FOIs you received.

I had the department spend an inordinate amount of time going through the many FOI requests that were conspired and inspired by the Australian Labor Party. Not only did it cause a lot of angst and wasted time; it also chewed up considerable energy in my office. You should ask what you would rather have your public servants do. Should they be shuffling papers, doing FOI responses, or should they be getting on with developing programs, policies and project ideas that may build an even better nation? I know what I would prefer.

That's not to say that some of the FOI requests, as the member for Sturt quite articulately and eloquently described, aren't vexatious, because they are. Deputy Speaker Wilkie, you would know this. I know you're very much about giving whistleblowers all the protections that they need, and I very much respect the role that you have played in that in your 15 years of service to this parliament and to this nation. I do. I genuinely mean that. But this isn't just about whistleblowers. This is also about, as the member for Sturt said, getting through some of those voluminous in-trays of FOI requests which, quite frankly, in many cases, are a try-on.

I appreciate we have two new members here in the chamber, the members for Bass and Moore. One day I hope you're ministers. I genuinely do—a long way off! Hopefully, we're back in government in 2028. But you're both young. You've both got time. When you are ministers, you will understand what I mean. You do get a lot of requests, and a lot of those requests are just try-ons, usually from the other side of politics.

I don't mind mentioning this: I thought the Prime Minister gave such a good answer in question time the other day that I texted him. He said that in some instances—and I don't think I'm speaking out of school, but, if I am, I'm sure he will rap me on the knuckles!—it is becoming unworkable because it is bogging down government and bogging down the processes of government.

I didn't have the crossbench, but the Prime Minister does, and the crossbench brings another level of requests—and this is not a reflection on you, Deputy Speaker Wilkie. I'm talking about the teals. Please know that. The crossbench adds another level of requests. In my next life, I will come back as a teal. I want to be a pontificator, and I want to be pious and perfect every time on every issue. I do want to be that person. At the moment, I just get complaints brought against me from everybody on Facebook and Twitter—my goodness, X!

The point I'm making is that transparency is important, but we also need to try and work through what are just vexatious, what are just based on fallacies and fantasies from the internet and what are just political try-ons and then what are genuine attempts to uncover something that needs to be exposed, that absolutely needs to be out in the public domain.

I'm not so sure that placing a charge on this is right, as the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 would have us do and would have us believe. This is where I will differ from the member for Sturt: it is a tax on truth. The difficulty that I have with that particular part of this legislation is that the people who put these vexatious and 'speculative'—to use the member for Sturt's word—FOIs in have deep pockets and are sometimes bankrolled by organisations that would waste the government's time. People who I know are genuine—some of those people I know Deputy Speaker Wilkie is passionate about—who just want something to be exposed because they can see a wrong and want it put right, don't have deep pockets. They don't have, quite frankly, the time and the money that this legislation would put into law.

There is a lot to unpack in this legislation. But the difficulty I have with it—and I am a former journalist and a former newspaper editor—is that there is a public right to know, and this is clamping down on that. I've also been the second in charge, and sometimes acted as the person in charge, of national security, and I know the sorts of things that come across that table at times. This is where you and I, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, might disagree. You haven't been at that table. Sometimes the public doesn't have a right to know until the 30 years have passed, when everything becomes obvious and is made free. You sometimes do have information that is a potential threat to this nation, and you don't want to have runs on banks and panic and people, quite frankly, setting their hair on fire about something that won't happen but potentially could happen.

I have always believed that the government of the day, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have always had the nation's best interest at heart; I do. Again, we'll agree to disagree, but that's why I do believe that they should have the ability to send the nation to war and to send troops into action. They shouldn't have to come back to the parliament, because imagine that sort of ability being held up by the Greens political party, or even the teals, because the teals, quite frankly, are often Independents masquerading as Greens or, the other way around—take your pick—Greens masquerading as Independents. These are important discussions that we need to have as a parliament and as a nation.

The Freedom of Information Amendment Bill proposes to require FOI requests to be made with applicant identification, banning anonymous or pseudonymous requests. There are two ways of looking at that. Sometimes people who are making those requests can't be in the public domain for all manner of reasons, and I get that. This is drawing a long bow, but it is a point. I notice that, increasingly, even in the football lists in the local park competitions that exist around my electorate, you'll get a lot of players who can't be identified. They just appear as 'private player' on these lists, with an asterisk after their name, even if they've kicked five goals or been best on field—that's in the men's and the women's footy competitions—because they don't want their former intimate partners or somebody else knowing who they are, where they live, where they're playing or what they're doing. This is part and parcel of modern society, and modern society has changed a lot from the days when I was a newspaper editor, mainly through the 1990s.

The bill also introduces a discretionary 40-hour cap on processing FOI requests, to limit agency workload. Good luck with that. I know that it burdens public servants when they get these requests. What I would like to see, as I said before, is public servants sharing the workload. They have to do all of the workload. They do enough already. I've said on a number of occasions in this place that I admire the work that public servants do. I do. I always want that to be known. They do a great job. They're often criticised. You'll often hear about the bloated bureaucracy and all the rest, but public servants do a mighty job for this nation and don't always get the credit they deserve. Sometimes they really have to be able to do the work that the government requests of them, not just follow through on FOIs.

The bill allows the Australian Information Commissioner to remit review applications to agencies for reconsideration. As I said, there a lot of things in this bill that would improve efficiency. The charging of a fee disturbs me. It worries me; it really does. I think the bill ignores key recommendations from the 2020 Senate inquiry. I often wonder why House of Representatives members sometimes scratch their head and wonder and worry about what the Senate gets up to. The Senate inquiries play a really important part in improving legislation and in getting the answers to issues put to them. In relation to ignoring the key recommendations, it's particularly on resourcing timeframes and cultural issues within the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. It does impose new barriers, such as fees and the ban on anonymous requests. It reduces access and discourages legitimate applicants. You can look at that either way.

I know the Attorney-General and others have put a ruler over this. They've really looked at this particular legislation, trying to jump ahead and see the unintended consequences, which aren't always obvious when governments put bills in. I know that's why we have an amendment process. That's why we have Senate inquiries. That's why sometimes we have to bring bills back and change them. Sometimes the unintended consequences are worse than what the minister thinks as they're putting bills before the parliament. Even the bureaucrats just don't often realise everything that could evolve as a result of a bill going before the parliament and getting royal assent by the Governor-General.

It expands the grounds for refusing information, especially through new broad exemptions on cabinet and deliberative processes. I have been on about this, about the cabinet. There has to be a certain amount of secrecy with cabinet. Pardon this, Independent; it might be an idea to block your ears for a minute. Independents will never get that. They just won't, because they'll never be around the cabinet table. They'll always make a big song and dance when they go out in the public and go out in the media about the fact that they're running the show. Well, they're not. The cabinet does do the administrative hard yards for and on behalf of the government, for and on behalf of the parliament and for and on behalf of the people. That's the Westminster system. I applaud and admire that. It's served us well since 1901, and may it long continue. We can't have Independents running the show. I mean, they're a rabble—the teals, particularly. I'm glad you can't interject on me, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, but I mean that with all good intentions, having sat around those cabinet tables. But this bill needs a lot of work, and we don't agree with it. (Time expired)

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Riverina for his contribution and for his personal comment about me early in his speech.

Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Wilkie, I promise not to make any of the same comments about your contribution to this place. I rise to make my contribution to the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025. The Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 would amend the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to improve the operation of the freedom of information framework through reducing system inefficiencies, providing clarity of the law and addressing abuse of the processes that impact on people's right to access information.

The bill responds to recommendations from a number of previous reviews and inquiries that have made recommendations for reform of the freedom of information system. This includes the Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010 and recommendations from the 2013 Hawke inquiry. It also makes amendments that go beyond recommendations of these reviews.

The proposed amendments would amend the cabinet exemption to clarify its operation. This ensures that it operates to appropriately protect information central to the cabinet process and ensure that the principle of collective ministerial responsibility is not undermined. It would also amend the public interest test as it relates to the deliberative processes exemption to clarify public interest factors which weigh against disclosure of deliberative material. These factors will include prejudicing the frank or timely provision of advice to or by an agency or minister, or prejudicing the orderly and effective conduct of a government decision-making process.

The bill provides for how the act applies to documents of a minister where a minister ceases to hold office or moves to a new portfolio, responding to a 2024 judicial decision which introduced some uncertainty in this area. The bill will also clarify issues around the definition of what is a document of a minister and provide that agencies should not be required to conduct searches for official documents of a minister hosted on agency systems.

The bill modernises aspects of the act and clarifies the law in certain areas to ensure efficient management of freedom of information applications. Furthermore, efficient management of reviews and complaints by agencies and Office of the Australian Information Commissioner addresses duplicative and inefficient processes. The bill strengthens the ability of government agencies to deal with vexatious and abusive requests and protects employees from harm, including by removing the ability of applicants to make FOI requests anonymously.

Additionally, it limits the circumstances in which agencies are required to release employee-identifying information captured in the freedom of information requests. The bill clarifies that information on agency or ministerial systems that contain personal or non-work related matters of staff are not captured in the definition of a document of an agency. The bill extends the timeframe for agency decisions to reflect working days and consultation processes to ensure high-quality original decision-making.

It also introduces a 40-hour processing time limit for FOIs. It creates a power in the act to enable to introduction of application fees for freedom of information requests, internal agency reviews and IC reviews. The bill was designed in close consultation with government agencies and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. This was following considerations of recommendations from the independent statutory review of the FOI Act and the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry into the operation of the Commonwealth freedom of information laws in 2023. This bill builds upon existing regulation powers in the FOI Act.

The Freedom of Information Act was established 40 years ago, before the advent of common use of electronic documents, communications and records in the workplace. The rate and volume of electronic records generated today by public sector agencies would have been unimaginable when the Freedom of Information Act was first introduced. The freedom of information processing cost to agencies has been steadily increasing over time. In 2023-24, FOI processing was conservatively estimated to cost agencies $86.24 million—a 23 per cent increase on the year prior and more than double the $36.32 million in 2010-11. The government received over 34,000 requests for freedom of information in the 2023-24 year and spent over one million hours dealing with freedom of information requests in the same year.

Freedom of information requests are also being used in malicious ways to disrupt government operations and make contact with public servants in abusive, threatening and excessive ways. There are not inexhaustible government resources available to process large and complex requests or to process requests that are abusive to people and abusive to government processes. Providing access to information to those who genuinely are seeking it is inhibited by inefficient systems and processes and a tolerance of abuse in the system.

There is also a need to clarify the law following the decision of Patrick v Attorney-General [2024] FCFCA 126, which raises complex issues in respect of requests to ministers and the established convention that deliberative documents of previous governments are not provided to an incoming government. The reforms are also intended to provide transparency about who is seeking access to information held by the Australian government. This will help agencies understand where there might be involvement of foreign governments or foreign entities in a request and to appropriately manage any potential national security risks.

Freedom of information is a vital feature of democracy, promoting accountability and transparency of government decision-making. The government will improve the freedom of information system so genuine freedom of information requests are prioritised. I commend the bill to the House.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's 43 years since the initial freedom of information legislation was enacted in this place. It was at that time a significant achievement—a strengthening of our democratic process. Sadly, that achievement is undermined by the legislation which is now before the House.

The FOI Act enshrines the right to access information. It protects individuals' rights by providing them with access to information about them held by the government. It protects the public interest by providing transparency of government expenditure around government activity and government decision-making. Over time, we have seen a number of governments wanting to prioritise efficiency over transparency but that's a concern for public integrity and it is a concern for the democratic process. Those concerns were noted by now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when he said in 2009 that we needed to reform our freedom of information laws so they could not be flouted by government. Indeed, prior to the 2022 election, the ALP said that Labor intended to make government more open, more accountable. They said they intended to strengthen freedom of information laws, and to foster compliance with them throughout the government.

Sadly, the bill now before the House reflects a government which is actively seeking to limit the public's access to information about its administration. The government was returned this year with a massive majority yet it lacks clarity of purpose, integrity of action, and a real commitment to transparency and openness. Labor's proposed freedom of information changes are a direct reversal of the reforms Labor itself introduced in 2009. One wonders what John Faulkner would think of them.

It is true that the freedom of information system is experienced by most who engage with it as being slow and frustrating. Departments are under resourced, and they often use unreasonable and unnecessarily obstructionist tactics, which result in frustrating delays and backlogs. As Crikey described in its recent submission to the Senate inquiry on the bill, those tactics create a feeling of 'administrative torture so unfathomable as to be undemocratic'. The government has claimed it has been forced to address a flood of frivolous vexatious and AI-generated requests. Its response to these is to restrict FOI access to all Australians by prohibiting anonymous applications. The rationale for these changes was the purported involvement of foreign actors, but the government has failed to provide evidence supporting those claims. The government claimed that foreign adversaries are using FOI to obtain information in a way that could be contrary to our national interest. But FOIs reveal information that should be public, and they cannot force the government to release anything that would be inappropriate for the public to know. So in the absence of any evidence that foreign actors are actually submitting vexatious requests, we have to suspect this claim is speculative. The prohibition of anonymous applications could have a chilling impact on vulnerable individuals, potentially whistleblowers, and others who may fear retaliation for very legitimate reasons.

The bill also reintroduces fees to lodge a request, excluding those for personal information. FOI application fees were abolished in 2010 when then Australian Information Commissioner John McMillan argued this was a part of making public requests for documents, and that FOI requests should be more routine and accepted part of the daily business of government agencies. In 2013 the Hawk review explicitly recommended application fees for FOI requests not be restored. The Attorney-General has failed to provide any reason why this should happen. Again, these fees could block access to FOIs and to transparent government by the most vulnerable. They are an unjustified nuisance tax by what has become an arrogant administration.

The bill also creates a means of refusal of requests for information, a practical reason to justify refusals if the work involved in processing the request is felt likely to substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations, or, in the case of a minister, would interfere with the performance of the minister's function. These are somewhat nebulous and undefined reasons for refusal and they are clearly going to be open to abuse.

The robodebt royal commission gave rise to grave concerns regarding abuse of cabinet confidentiality exemptions. Robodebt was an unlawful scheme. It caused immeasurable injury. Its authors knew that that was the case, but they deliberately, dishonestly and immorally acted to conceal that knowledge. The robodebt royal commission found that documents related to robodebt were deliberately marked 'cabinet-in-confidence' to ensure that they were not released. In her report around the matter, the royal commissioner noted that the deception at the heart of robodebt would have been discovered much sooner had those cabinet documents been available to the public and to the media through FOIs. She recommended that the relevant section of the FOI Act be repealed and that the description of a document as a cabinet document should no longer be in and of itself justification for maintaining the confidentiality of that document. She suggested that confidentiality should only be maintained over cabinet documents, or parts of cabinet documents, where it can be reasonably justified for an identifiable public interest reason.

But, instead, the Attorney-General proposes the very opposite. Instead of repealing the confidentiality exemption, this bill expands that exemption. No longer does a document have to be for the 'dominant' purpose of going to cabinet; it is enough if it is for a 'substantial' purpose. So documents which might be prepared to brief ministers on issues which might come up in cabinet would be included, and so would consultants' reports and other attachments to cabinet submissions. This, again, is directly in opposition to John Faulkner's establishment of the dominant purpose test in 2009. This administration is demonstrating regression on the standards set by previous Labor governments.

But by far the most egregious part of the bill—the attempt to draw the curtains, turn off the lights and hide behind the couch—is the insertion of a public interest test. This would allow ministers to block the release of documents if they determine that such is not in the public interest. One basis for the test is suggested to be that such disclosure would or could be reasonably expected to prejudice the frank or timely discussion of matters or exchange of opinions between participants in deliberative processes of government. This clause reflects the claim that FOI can impede the ability of senior public servants to provide frank and fearless advice to ministers. Revisiting the past yet again, I invoke the 2013 Hawke review, which agreed with the former Commonwealth Ombudsman John Wood that officials should be happy to publicly defend any advice they give to ministers and that, if they are not happy to do so, they should perhaps rethink that advice.

Insertion of a public interest test at the same time that this government has expanded the capacity for national interest approvals via the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act presents the Australian public with the extraordinary possibility that this government could approve massive new fossil fuel projects, highly polluting critical minerals projects or rare earth mines and then deny to the public any information or any rationale relating to the basis of those approvals. It is confounding that this government proposes to be so evasive and so circuitous. If the government's decisions are lawful, sound, based on the best possible advice and in the public interest and, indeed, the national interest, why be so coy? Get out there and share it with the people.

I put it to the government that concerns regarding frank, fearless and timely advice from public servants are not best addressed by increasing secrecy, that it should proactively publish information as requested and needed by our constituents, that the principle of proactive disclosure underpins a confident and effective democracy and that a core democratic principle is accountability by the government to the people that it serves. On those grounds, I cannot support this legislation.

Tom French (Moore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025. Frankly, I thought the member for Moore was looking me deep in the eye here and trying to convince me of the greatness of this piece of legislation. I am sorry to tell him this is not a bill I would wish to try to defend. While aspirations he speaks to are honourable, this bill simply does not deliver them.

The right to access government information is an indispensable feature of our democracy. It is key check and balance on the executive, on the Public Service, and it is a protection against bad government. It is living proof of the democ in democracy—meaning the people. In Australia, the government should not sit above the people but with them. So I was rather amused at that explanation of the changing of the objectives of this act because it simply is not true.

Our freedom-of-information system is underpinned by the belief that every citizen, every member of our community, has the right to access information about the decisions that governments make. To trade this away is to trade away a great Australian democratic pillar as important as compulsory voting or the independent Electoral Commission. We don't have to look far to see what can happen when governments, even those elected democratically, begin to wind back and dismantle democratic institutions.

Of course, there are genuine limitations to the right to access government documents, limitations that are clearly laid out in the existing FOI Act, limitations that many say go too far. The Australian Press Council points out:

Broadly defined exemptions for Cabinet documents, deliberative processes, national security, and "commercial-in-confidence" have historically been applied far beyond their original intent.

The reality is that most FOI documents contain significant redaction, sometimes comprising the majority of the document, and that's if the document is released at all. In recent years, for the first time ever, the number of FOI requests refused was higher than the number of requests fully granted. In the past 10 years, the refusal rate has doubled. FOI expert Maria O'Sullivan from Deakin University notes that, while there is real need for reform of the act, this bill 'severely threatens government transparency' and 'is not the way to do it'.

Unfortunately, there is more bad than good in this bill. Using some much-needed and important reforms as cover, this government seeks to implement sweeping restrictions and carve-outs under the guise of 'modernisation'. It shifts the entire purpose of the FOI system from 'pro-disclosure' to 'maybe-disclosure'. Passed unamended, this bill would represent a significant retrogression of transparency and accountability in Australia's federal system of government. It would be a direct repudiation of the Australian voters' wishes. They didn't vote for secrecy; they voted for transparency. This bill has no friends outside the walls of government. It should be abandoned, frankly. It is desperate and, honestly, it was dateless until it popped its way onto the Notice Paper and weaselled its way into the Federation Chamber today.

I will now explain what the bill does and why I am so concerned about it. The government has said that its intention is:

… to modernise the Freedom of Information framework, reduce system inefficiencies, address abuses of process, and clarify the operation of certain provisions and exemptions within the FOI Act.

This bill makes around 30 amendments. Several are uncontroversial and would simply streamline certain processes for the benefit of both the government and the public. I have no argument with some of these positive changes, including: clarifying that personal information of public servants is not FOI-able other than in certain circumstances; preventing concurrent agency and Information Commissioner reviews of FOI refusals; more clearly defining that timeframes apply to working days only; expanding the powers of the Information Commissioner to delegate decisions while ensuring that important decisions continue to be made by the commissioner or senior officers; and clarifying that, when a minister ceases to hold that ministerial office, the relevant agency can handle future FOI request relating to the minister's time in office. I welcome these changes and recognise that the FOI system, like all systems, needs to remain fit for purpose.

When I'm assessing legislation, I look for the good, but I ask key questions. The first is: what is the problem we are trying to solve here and what is the change we are trying to make? Secondly, I ask whether the proposed legislative response is an appropriate response to that challenge. I ask: will it actually fix the problem? Thirdly, I ask whether the proposed legislation is good governance. Is it ethical? Is it fair? Will it have unintended consequences for some groups of people?

Unfortunately, I find that, despite some positive measures, key parts of this bill fails on all three of those questions. This bill will not deliver on its goal and will instead make the FOI system more secretive and harder to access and will shift more government decision-making out of the public line of sight. Rather than addressing abuses of process, it could in fact lead to more abuses of process—not by people making requests for information, but by government agencies and departments.

First, the bill changes the purposes of the entire FOI Act. It shifts the FOI system from one that is pro-disclosure to one that balances disclosure against the interests of the government, departments and ministers. This is highly concerning, and has been widely criticised by organisations such as the Human Rights Law Centre. The Law Council of Australia says the 'the alteration to the objects of the FOI Act alters the presumptive right to information, replacing that with a discretion that promotes economic factors into decision-making'. The Centre for Public Integrity says this bill 'takes the Australian freedom of information regime in a more secret direction'.

Second is the proposal to prohibit anonymous requests, which are vital for investigative journalists or whistleblowers seeking to reveal government malfeasance. The government says that it must ban anonymous requests to stop the deluge of request being made by bots, foreign actors and trolls. Well, if this really were the case, I would be more inclined to agree. But here's the rub: the government hasn't provided evidence of persistent spam or malicious requests. All it can provide is a handful of cherry picked examples. Now, if the government insists on such a drastic and draconian reform to the FOI system, surely it must provide the evidence base—and it simply hasn't.

I have no doubt that there are vexations applicants, and, indeed, there will be serial spammers. New provisions in the bill to deal with vexatious and frivolous requests appear sufficient to deal with troublemakers in a more limited and restrained way. It's why I can't support an unjustified move to remove every Australian's right to make an anonymous request, and the chilling effect this would have on investigative public interest journalism in this country—something that so many of us deeply rely on.

Similarly, provisions to create application fees appear to be nothing more than a new barrier to access. Fee for access is contrary to the right to access information, and that it's likely to cost more to administer than it will ever raise in revenue. The government points to state and territory frameworks that charge fees, but this simply isn't sufficient reason. A fee system will simply create new barriers for people with little disposable income to access the FOI system and make it more likely that they will decide against accessing or pursuing information.

Provisions for financial hardship and exemptions for personal information make a bad measure slightly less bad, but the fact remains that this government has made no compelling argument on why fees are actually necessary in the first place.

But perhaps the most egregious changes are those to cabinet document exemptions. Already it's incredibly difficult to access any document that has gone anywhere near the cabinet room. Government often fights tooth and nail in the courts to fight against release of these documents, but now they want to go further, making it virtually impossible to know how and why cabinet ministers are making the most important decisions affecting our country. Under this bill, anything considered or even simply noted in the cabinet process will be exempt, rather than the previous definition that referred specifically 'to deliberation and decision-making'. This is very concerning. Similarly, to be exempt under this bill a document need only have the substantive purpose of informing a minister in relation to an issue to be considered by cabinet. So this means, remarkably, that the document need not actually go the cabinet, but simply inform a minister in relation to an issue that cabinet will consider. Frankly, it's hard to imagine anything this couldn't include.

This will make cabinet documents even more secretive, directly contravening the recommendations of the robodebt royal commission. Just today, the Centre for Public Integrity said that it is misleading to suggest that this bill simply clarifies the existing cabinet exemptions. In contrast, it's the accepted legal view of the Law Council of Australia and others that these amendments will substantially broaden the cabinet exemption in highly concerning ways. And for a government that said 'never again' to robodebt, this certainly doesn't inspire confidence.

I'm not convinced that this bill can be reformed, so deep and broad are the issues that I, along with many of my parliamentary colleagues, the community and civil society, have raised. However, I always seek to come to this place not only with problems but with solutions, so I sought to look at this bill and make some good-faith suggestions to improve it. Several sections simply can't be fixed, and I've suggested they be repealed in their entirety. I hope members of the coalition, who seem to be saying they're not in favour of this bill either, will support these amendments. I moved amendments to repeal the section that creates application fees for FOI requests, as I previously stated. The government has failed to make the case for why these amendments are necessary, and it has not sufficiently justified that application fees won't deter many people from making an application in the first place.

I've also circulated amendments to repeal parts 1 and 2 of schedule 7. Part 1 would enable decision-makers to refuse a request when it would be clearly exempt under the relevant section of the act. There would be no need to check whether it's actually an exempt document. Simply believing it is exempt will be enough to refuse a request. I know this name is triggering for the government, but I'm going to say it anyway: as former senator Rex Patrick said, these provisions are ripe for misuse, and I agree. While you can appeal, most people will simply give up. Part 2 expands cabinet exemptions. I seek to repeal this section entirely, and, as I said before, this contradicts a key recommendation of the robodebt royal commission and will reinforce the culture of cabinet secrecy that allowed robodebt to persist for so long. While these exemptions remain, there is no chance that I can support this bill.

The government has said this bill would be debated in future sitting weeks. It wasn't on the original program and only appeared last night. Up until then, it was desperate and dateless. But it appeared as an item of business today here in the Federation Chamber. These changes are so significant that this debate should be happening in the House of Representatives where all eyes are on it.

In summary, I will not be supporting this bill, and I implore the government to withdraw it. I call on all good and fair-minded members of the government to ask whether this is really a bill they can support and whether this is a bill their constituents would support. Is this a bill you can defend? Is this a bill you can be proud of? When we return to our communities this weekend, what will we say when asked how we voted on a proposal to make government more secretive and less accountable to the Australian people?

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Freedom of information is one of the key pillars of a democracy. It should ensure that people have access to the information they need to understand the decisions and actions of their government. Australia has a proud history as a world leader in freedom of information, having introduced a comprehensive federal FOI scheme in 1982, as part of the new administrative law reforms, and then undertaken a major overhaul of the scheme in 2010, under the leadership of Senator John Faulkner, to promote a greater culture of disclosure. Unfortunately, the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 does not continue this leadership. This bill reduces government transparency and takes our public services in a more secretive direction. Both of these outcomes would undermine our democracy. Here we are, with the bill having been relegated to the Federation Chamber by a government who clearly wants to ram these changes through without adequate time for scrutiny and consideration and without the level of debate they deserve.

Certainly, Australia's FOI system needs an overhaul. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees with that. Indeed, in December 2023, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee described the system as broken and unfit for purpose. In July this year, the Centre for Public Integrity released analysis of the operation of the FOI system. It revealed a system that is underresourced, riddled with delays and concerning indications of the abuse of exemptions. And the Australia Institute has found that only 21 per cent of FOI requests in financial year 2023 were granted in full compared to 81 per cent in 2006. Where the average request took 13 hours to determine in 2006-7, it took 51 hours in 2023-24. In other words, the government employs four public servants to do what only took one public servant under the Howard government. Clearly, the system needs fixing, but the government's bill takes the system in the wrong direction.

Under the guise of responding to alleged abuse of the system by technology, the government is attempting to fundamentally shift the FOI culture away from disclosure, undermining many of the important reforms introduced in 2010. The government has framed this bill as a crackdown on 'abusive and frivolous' FOIs, but where is the evidence of this abuse by technology? Requests for the government's evidence for these proposed freedom of information request restrictions have repeatedly gone unanswered. During Senate estimates, the Attorney-General's Department was unable to produce any material evidence of malicious actors or automated requests, and in response to an order for the production of documents in the Senate, requesting evidence of claims that vexatious requests under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 are being generated by artificial intelligence or other non-human actors, the Attorney-General provided two US media reports and a list of talking points. This is hardly conclusive evidence.

Among the bill's most concerning features are these: the expansion of the 'cabinet document' exemption; the expansion of the 'deliberative processes' exemption, through the addition of a list of 'factors against giving access'; the reintroduction of application fees for FOI requests; and the removal of the ability for an FOI applicant to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym.

First, I want to turn to the expansion of the absolute exemption for cabinet confidentiality. This is an existing exemption that we know governments rely on to resist applications. Indeed, the government relied on cabinet confidentiality to refuse to deliver to the Senate the documents that provide evidence of the vexatious and AI-generated applications that it claims it is responding to in the bill. Recently, I had my own FOI request for the final report from the review of public sector board appointments processes denied on the basis of cabinet confidentiality. The bill will broaden that exemption. It proposes that a document will be exempt if 'a substantial purpose for its preparation was submission for consideration by the cabinet.' This will effectively broaden the amount of material able to be denied.

The government is expanding this exemption, despite the royal commission into robodebt finding that cabinet secrecy enabled the abuse of power to continue. Specifically, the commission found that, while the minister failed to meet his responsibility to properly inform cabinet, it was senior public servants who provided advice to cabinet that did not contain a reference to the concerns regarding income averaging and the need for legislative change. In relation to the cabinet exemption, Commissioner the Hon. Catherine Holmes AC did not merely recommend tinkering with the exemption; she recommended its complete repeal:

… the Government should end the blanket approach to confidentiality of Cabinet documents. To give effect to this, section 34 of the FOI Act should be repealed. The wide range of class and conditional exemptions in the FOI Act is sufficient to protect the public interest in relation to Cabinet documents.

She continued:

The mere fact that a document is a Cabinet document should not, by itself, be regarded as justifying maintenance of its secrecy.

But what we have here, under the cover of the robodebt royal commission, is the government extending the cabinet document exemption and extending it to briefing documents, summaries or any reference to the contents of a document to which an exemption applies—a massive expansion of this exemption.

Next, the bill expands the conditional exemption for documents that would reveal the deliberative processes of government. It does this by adding a new list of 'factors against giving access' in addition to the current 'factors favouring access' and 'irrelevant factors'. This list of factors against giving access to a document in the public interest includes whether 'giving access to the document would or could reasonably be expected to have' any of the following effects, including prejudicing the 'orderly and effective conduct of a government decision-making process.' In the words of former Public Service Commissioner Andrew Podger, this 'could be used to refuse access to almost any document'.

In expanding the deliberative process exemption, the government is relying on the 2015 Shergold review and the 2019 Thodey review, which including anecdotes from public servants that their advice is chilled by the possibility of disclosure under the FOI regime and recommended the widening of the deliberative process exemption. However, the chilling effect is far from conclusive. Andrew Podger, the former commissioner for the Public Service, has said:

… other factors than FOI are contributing to failures to provide frank and fearless advice.

One clearly accepted by the royal commission is the process for appointing (and terminating) departmental secretaries and the role and appointment process of the APS Commissioner.

He went on to say:

The FOI Act may be contributing … but the evidence is far from clear.

More likely is pressure from ministers and ministerial advisers exaggerating the political dangers, and a public service overly responsive to the government and failing to meet their obligations to serve the Parliament and the Australian public.

The Auditor-General, Caralee McLiesh, also recently highlighted the costs associated with lack of transparency in the public sector, stating:

A lack of transparency means it is harder for people to understand government activity, obtain information to make decisions, and participate more fully in public life. It weakens accountability in a system that lacks other accountability mechanisms …

Such accountability mechanisms include market competition. A proactive approach to publishing much more information would reduce a lot of the administrative burden of FOI requests. Additionally, former commissioner Podger has recommended that firm limits on political involvement would ensure a more appropriate system of rewards and penalties for senior public servants. It is not hard to imagine that this would allow a greater scope for the provision of frank and fearless advice.

Next, this bill reintroduces application fields that were abolished in 2010 as part of the opening up of government and removes the ability to make anonymous requests. The government argues that these changes are needed to deal with the volume of requests—in particular, vexatious or AI generated requests—but, again, the evidence is minimal. If the government is asking the parliament to restrict democratic rights, at the very least it needs to produce evidence that would justify this. There is also no evidence that the government has considered alternative ways of addressing these matters that won't dissuade legitimate FOI applicants, particularly those from poorer or more vulnerable applicants, including potential future whistleblowers. The government is worried about the chilling effect of FOI on government decision-makers, but shows no concern for the chilling effect of these amendments on legitimate applicants.

As an example of the legislative process, the bill represents an affront to good lawmaking. There has been no proper consultation on such an important piece of legislation. The government itself admits that it is relying on previous reviews—in particular, the statutory FOI Act review conducted by Allan Hawke back in 2013, over a decade ago. The idea that we can modernise Australia's FOI system by relying on recommendations from a 2013 review is hard to believe, but, worse, the government has cherrypicked the recommendations from that review. The primary recommendation of the 2013 review that it is now relying on to push through amendments was to undertake a comprehensive review of the FOI system.

The government is also silent on the recommendations of both the 2015 Shergold review and 2019 Thodey review into the Public Service that further reviews be conducted into FOI system. And what about the other recommendations in those reviews about strengthening the independence and culture of the Public Service, including, for instance, the Thodey review recommendations to strengthen the processes of appointment and removal of departmental secretaries? They have conveniently failed to mention that the Hawke review did not recommend expanding the deliberative processes exemption and expressly rejected the claim that FOI would chill the delivery of what is a legal obligation on public servants to give frank and fearless advice.

Australia's FOI system is a pillar of our democracy. It certainly needs repair, but this bill is not fit for purpose and I cannot, in all good faith, support it. The government should withdraw this bill and set up an independent comprehensive review of the system that modernises it in a way that works for, and not against, our democracy.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak on the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025. In describing this bill and what Labor is doing, I think I'd paraphrase a Pink Floyd song called 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond'. My paraphrasing would be: Labor is saying that we'll bask in the shadows of secrecy and concealment, riding on a clandestine dream.

With this bill, the Albanese government is trying to dodge scrutiny, and the bill will normalise the use of fees for freedom of information, reducing transparency and accountability. Only last week, we saw a perfect example of the government's love of secrecy. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy, under political and public pressure, finally released his incoming government brief. This brief was heavily redacted. In some sections, page after page was completely blank. It was real Watergate-era stuff.

Now, energy is a critical issue for Australia, and the Australian public deserves to know the truth about Labor's energy transition. They see the outcomes in higher energy bills, but they should also be told the truth about Labor's transition, how it is going, and what advice the minister has received about the cost—the cost of energy being such a critical part of Australia's future prosperity. Instead, we get a briefing paper with massive information gaps. And this bill will make things worse.

Under Labor, there's been a surge in FOI refusals. Non-disclosure agreements are used in consultations, the Senate orders for production of documents are flouted, and the Prime Minister cut opposition staffing, making it harder to hold the government to account. These changes have been rightly described as a 'truth tax'.

Firstly, there's a ban on anonymous requests. This bill prohibits anonymous FOI applications, requiring all applicants to declare their identity. This eliminates the ability for whistleblowers—who may be in fear for various reasons—or vulnerable individuals to request documents without revealing themselves.

There are also mandatory application fees. This bill introduces a fee for lodging an FOI request, except for those seeking their own personal information, or waivers in cases of financial hardship. Critics, of which I am one, argue that this will deter both journalists and ordinary Australians from accessing information. It seems like we're entering a period of 'cash for transparency'.

There are also expanded agency powers to refuse requests. Agencies can gain broader powers to reject requests deemed vexatious, abusive or frivolous, including those considered an abuse of process. These powers may allow government departments to refuse more requests on subjective grounds. I'll just go back to that: reject requests deemed vexatious, abusive—and I don't really have a problem with those two words, but 'frivolous'? What's the meaning of frivolous? The meaning of frivolous is to not have any sensible, serious purpose or value. Who decides what has serious purpose or value?

There will be a 40-hour processing cap, so a discretionary limit is placed on the time agencies must spend processing a request, allowing them to stop work once the cap is reached, even if disclosure is in the public interest.

There's broader cabinet document exemptions. The bill changes the exemption for cabinet documents from those created or submitted for the 'dominant purpose' of going to cabinet to those created for 'substantial purpose'. This widens the scope for withholding documents and may lead to even more claims of cabinet confidentiality.

In the bill, there'll also be a stricter deliberative document test. The amendments clarify and potentially narrow access to documents that relate to deliberative processes. What does that mean? Well, it makes it easier to withhold records of internal discussions and advice.

This bill doesn't free up information; it just locks it up tighter. In its submission to the 2023 inquiry into the operation of Commonwealth freedom of information laws conducted by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, the Law Council of Australia expressed a strong view that the transparency afforded to the FOI scheme through the FOI Act is critical to the effective operation of the administrative law system and, more broadly, to the integrity of Australia's democratic institutions. What did the Law Council say about the bill? While welcoming efforts to streamline FOI processes and minimise misuse of these processes, the Law Council was of the view:

A number of the proposals in the Bill extend beyond efficiency gain and weigh against the central objectives of the FOI Act… We suggest the Bill includes several amendments which may have the effect of reducing transparency around Government decision-making and hindering scrutiny of matters in the public interest, contrary to the obligations under the FOI Act to 'facilitate and promote access to information promptly and at the lowest cost'… On balance. the Law Council recommends the Bill not be passed in its current form. The Law Council is opposed to those areas of the Bill that have the tendency to undermine the core principles of FOI, implement barriers to the public accessing information, and enlarge the scope of exemptions.

The Law Council aren't the only ones who have problems with this. The Centre for Public Integrity weighed in on the merits of the bill:

Australia's freedom of information (FOI) laws are meant to guarantee transparency, accountability, and public trust in government. Yet the Centre for Public Integrity warns that the proposed Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025 risks taking Australia backwards. The Bill weakens the FOI Act's pro-disclosure foundations by expanding Cabinet and deliberative process exemptions, introducing fees, and removing anonymous applications. These changes would make it harder for journalists, parliamentarians, and citizens to scrutinise government decisions, and could silence the voices of vulnerable or marginalised applicants.

I think this government is not really interested in scrutiny. I think that got worse through its first term and its conduct during the second term highlights that, with the reduction of staff and allocations to opposition. Opposition and the crossbench are all interested in holding the government to account in the interests of the people they represent in this parliament, and they need a fair application of staff to be able to do that. For the Prime Minister and the government to come in and withdraw that staff—that hints to something very dangerous in the culture of the Albanese government. It's saying, 'We don't want scrutiny.' It's saying, 'We don't want an effective opposition to be able to hold us to account.' I can't remember, over the course of my life when I've had an interest in politics, another government behaving like this in relation to the fair allocation and resourcing of opposition.

I'll give you another example about the avoidance of debate. Today, there was to be a matter of public importance debate. These things are important because they give members of the opposition, the coalition or the crossbench, the ability to raise matters of public importance—matters that are important to the people they, and we, represent. I think it's great opportunity. It's sort of 10 minutes, 10 minutes and then five each. It's a great opportunity, as I did last week, to be able to bring up the plight of some of the hardworking taxpayers in my electorate, and what they go through, and why I think the government sometimes wastes the tax that comes from their hard work. The government then get to rebut and explain why they're doing what they're doing. I think that's healthy. It's a good way for parliament to be able to debate issues, not so much in question time or in what we're doing now, which is debating legislation. But it's a bit of back and forth. I think the MPI is a good thing.

Today, the government decided to suspend standing orders and, effectively, cancel the MPI. In the MPI, all of us in the coalition were going to talk about the government's attitude and actions towards regional Australia. I think that would have been a really good debate. I think we were going to talk about energy, taxation and agriculture. But none of that got talked about, because the government, in what I might say was a very arrogant way, stood up and said, 'We are suspending standing orders and cancelling the MPI.' Is that the way a government that is welcoming scrutiny and is prepared to defend its position behaves? I don't think so.

Many Australians are concerned about these changes. Trust in government has diminished. I came into this parliament in 2022, as did the member for Curtin. The member for Monash came in the last election, in 2025. I think we all came into this place because we wanted to represent our people and are prepared to be authentic in the way we do that. If the government wants to be authentic—the member for Monash and I hope to be in government one day, so we'll have to stand by what we've said today, but I'm prepared to do that—and if people want to be authentic in this place, they've got to open themselves up to scrutiny. A good government is not afraid of scrutiny. This bill reduces transparency and creates more places to hide information. We need more transparency, not less. There are experts out there, who we agree with, who suggest this bill will erode the foundations of freedom of information, and that is a backwards step for Australia.

I'll just finish—as some people do when debating politics—with the words of an episode from Yes, Minister. A good government opens itself up to transparency and open government. In the words of Yes, Minister, 'This seems to be the closed season for open government.'

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Freedom of information, or FOI, is a cornerstone of our democracy. It's how we hold government to account. But the FOI system has room for improvement. There are arguments to reduce disclosure of information. It creates a lot of work for the public service. Anecdotally, it's full of vexatious and voluminous requests. Public servants are increasingly reluctant to write things down for fear of having their documents FOI'd. This bill addresses these problems by reducing disclosure, expanding cabinet confidentiality, limiting anonymous requests, adding new grounds to reject applications and introducing application fees.

But there are also reasons to increase disclosure. Requests can take far too long to be answered. The proportion of FOI requests granted in full has dropped from 59 per cent in 2012 to just 25 per cent in 2024. There have been findings that the system is driving a culture of secrecy, a lack of ministerial engagement and inconsistent exemptions. Journalists and legal advocates report administrative torture, with excessive redactions and delays that compromise public interest reporting. These really crucial problems, requiring greater transparency, are not addressed in this bill.

That's why every major review that has touched on the FOI system has called for a comprehensive, independent review of the whole FOI Act. That's what we need before we make any significant changes. As we watch democratic institutions crumble in the United States, now is the time to safeguard our institutions of transparency and accountability, not undermine them. I want to run through why the FOI system is important, the current problems with the system, why this bill is not the answer and the arguments for an independent review.

The FOI Act was introduced in 1982 with a clear purpose: to open up government, to shift the default from secrecy to transparency and to ensure that decisions made in the name of the public are visible to the public. It has generally worked. Over the years, FOI requests have revealed waste, mismanagement and corruption. They have informed journalism, empowered whistleblowers and strengthened public debate. Perhaps the most powerful recent example is the robodebt scandal. It was FOI requests that helped uncover the internal advice ignored by ministers. It was FOI that revealed the legal doubts raised by public servants. It was FOI that exposed the machinery of a program that caused immense harm to vulnerable Australians. Robodebt is one of the worst misuses of government power in decades and, without the FOI system, the details of robodebt may never have come to light. This is the power of FOI. It ensures that the public can find out what the government is doing. It exposes corruption and waste. It allows the public to participate in government decision-making and exercise some power as citizens. It's about ensuring that governments act in the public interest and are held to account when they don't.

But the FOI system is broken, and this is widely acknowledged. Given its purpose is transparency and accountability, some of the most worrying issues are about delays and secrecy. Twenty-five per cent of first-instance FOI requests take more than a month, and 10 per cent take more than three months. And, if you don't like that first-instance decision about what's disclosed, the time it takes to have such a decision appealed has blown out to more than 15 months. In many instances, this could render the information out of date and irrelevant by the time it's obtained.

The royal commission into the robodebt scandal found that an FOI system with greater transparency would have uncovered problems much earlier and allowed for quicker resolution. As for secrecy, as well as the halving of full disclosures over the last 12 years, refusals have nearly doubled, from 12 per cent to 23 per cent. This has become significantly worse under this government. In 2022-2023, for the first time on record, more FOI requests were refused than granted in full, defying the FOIA Act's presumption in favour of disclosure. And, when appealed, nearly half the decisions not to disclose are overturned.

It's true that, as well as these flaws in the timeliness and fullness of disclosure, the FOI system causes efficiency headaches for the Public Service. No doubt there are vexatious and frivolous requests, although I have only heard anecdotal evidence of this. The 580 requests received by the eSafety team from a single entity must have been painful, but I have seen no data about what proportion of FOI requests are vexatious. The minister has said that three-quarters of requests are from individual seeking information about themselves, which presumably are less likely to be vexatious. Given that public interest journalists would make up a significant proportion of the remaining quarter, the vexatious proportion must be well under a quarter. The question is: what's an appropriate price to pay for transparency and accountability? We have the equivalent of 500 full-time public servants filling FOI requests. Is that too many in a public service with 213,000 people in it? That's 0.2 per cent focused on public accountability. I recognise that vexatious applicants may now be able to use AI to generate many and slightly varied requests. This is a problem that needs to be considered along with the many other ways AI will be used in both helpful and harmful ways.

A second headache for the Public Service is the way the system might inhibit frank and fearless advice from the Public Service. The Shergold review made this clear. Public servants are increasingly reluctant to write things down. They fear that their internal deliberations will be exposed, misinterpreted and politicised. That fear undermines good governance. It weakens the quality of advice and it erodes trust within the Public Service.

This bill proposes to deal with these problems by: introducing an application fee for FOI requests; expanding cabinet confidentiality so that a document doesn't have to be produced if it was created for the 'substantial' purpose of being presented to cabinet, which is looser than the previous 'dominant' purpose test; amending the public interest test to introduce factors that weigh against disclosure, including if it may prejudice the frank or timely discussion of matters or exchange of opinions; introducing a 40-hour processing cap on FOI requests; introducing a pathway to reject vexatious or frivolous requests; preventing applicants from being anonymous; and other amendments to clarify and streamline the FOI process. The government argues that many of these amendments are in line with recommendations made by a series of reviews over the past 12 years.

The Federation Chamber transcript was published up to 20:00. The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.