Transparency fail: Frequent FOI breaches revealed
A review of freedom of information disclosures has found that most government departments and agencies are falling short of their legislated requirements.
Two-thirds of federal public bodies may be breaking the law by failing to publish freedom of information requests within their required time frames.
And half of the agencies aren’t publishing all that’s required, meaning Australians are being denied access to public information.
Australia’s broken FOI system has been shown up again, this time in an Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s desktop review of disclosure practices.
The office looked at how long it took departments and agencies to publish requests onto their “disclosure logs”: the online portals which hold the treasure trove of all FOI releases.
Under FOI rules, released information is given first to the applicant and then placed onto the disclosure logs.
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Of the 30 bodies assessed, the office found 20 weren’t doing so within the mandatory 10 business days.
“The disclosure logs are a requirement,” FOI Commissioner Alice Linacre said.
“Government information is a national resource and if a person has got access to some information, the best place for that information to go is out into the broader public, so that it can assist in informing participatory democracy and public debate.”
Linacre stopped short of saying the agencies were breaking the law as the desktop review did not give the bodies a right of reply.
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“What we would say is that there’s potentially a large number of agencies that are not meeting their statutory obligations and that’s of concern to us as the regulator,” she said.
“We’ll be doing some follow up work with agencies to make sure that they appreciate the obligation (and) try to improve their performance.”
The review involved the 16 federal departments subject to the regime and the agencies most frequently subject to FOI requests.
They include federal police, the taxation office, the NDIS delivery agency and the Australian National University.
Linacre said many agencies also fell short of best practice with their disclosure logs, which would include fully searchable documents, descriptive titles and dated entries.
Previous reviews into FOI have found that more than half of applicants are denied their requests and more than half of reviews show agencies withhold information when they shouldn’t.
The government attempted to reform FOI laws in 2025, calling the framework “stuck in the 1980s” and “not working well for anybody”.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland introduced legislation in September to ease pressure on the system, allowing the government to refuse more requests, banning anonymous applicants and introducing a new fee.
However, after a backlash from integrity advocates and widespread political opposition, the bill was pulled in March.
Rowland is yet to reveal Labor’s plans for the shelved legislation.
-with AAP
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