Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government has said they would be the most transparent in Australia's history, but earlier this week we found out that they're running from transparency. When Labor came to office they made a clear promise to Australians—that this would be a government committed to transparency, doing things differently. But what we've seen has been the complete reverse of that. Under this government, for the first time ever, in 2022-23, the proportion of FOI requests refused exceeded the proportion of those granted in full. The proportion of FOI requests granted in full remains lower under this government than previous governments, despite their stated commitment to transparency.

The government's proposed changes to freedom-of-information legislation, announced earlier this week, aren't going to strengthen transparency; they're going to weaken transparency. They don't empower citizens. They're going to push them further away from the truth and their right to know. Instead of reform what's being offered here is more restriction—more fees, more red tape and more excuses to hide away from scrutiny when Australians ask fair and reasonable questions of their government.

This isn't reform. This is retreat. As the shadow Attorney-General, Julian Leeser, said, 'This is a tax on truth or a tax on transparency, a new barrier that will require Australians to pay to access information that rightly belongs to them.' We should always be looking to modernise systems. No-one's arguing with that, but modernisation should be about making things more accessible to the citizens not less. It should bring government closer to the people not push them further away. But what's been put forward here entrenches, at the heart of this government, a culture of secrecy—one where scrutiny is seen as a nuisance and one where government is less about serving the people and more about shielding itself from criticism. This is not the kind of democracy Australians expect or deserve.