Ms SPENDER (Wentworth) (21:10): Could you think of a more beautifully ironic way for the government to debate a bill that concerns one of the greatest transparency features in our democracy: freedom of information? This government has moved debate on this bill, the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025, in the Federation Chamber late on a Tuesday night at the same time as the most critical environmental legislation is being considered in the main chamber. It's almost as if they hoped nobody would notice. I will not be supporting this legislation. This is a friendless bill that, unlike this debate, deserves to be buried.
FOI was established to give Australian citizens access to information about their government and bureaucracy and the decisions that impact their lives. It is an essential mechanism to ensure transparency, scrutiny and accountability in government and government institutions. FOI is not about making government's life easier. It is about citizens being able to hold their government to account. At a time when, all around the world, confidence in our institutions is under attack from misinformation, disinformation, populism and opportunism, we cannot defend our democracy without transparency. But, even before this legislation, access to freedom of information under this government is on the decline. In the last five years the proportion of requests in FOI has declined from nearly 50 per cent to 21 per cent. Over the past 20 years, it's fallen from 77 per cent.
The government claims that this legislation will modernise the FOI framework, drive efficiencies and clarify the cabinet exemptions and deliberative materials. I want to be clear: no-one I've spoken to disputes the premise that the FOI laws need to be modernised. In 2024 public servants spent more than a million hours processing 34,000 FOI requests, which costed about $86 million. But, in designing this bill, the government has failed to meaningfully consult non-government users of the FOI system—the people who this FOI system is seeking to serve. It has failed to present key evidence to concerns relating to vexatious requests, the existence of AI bots and malicious foreign actors, which are all reasons that the government has used to justify this FOI bill in this state. The FOI Act needs to be amended, but absolutely not in this process and absolutely not in this form.
As the Centre for Public Integrity outlined in their submission to the bill, in response to a Senate order for the production of documents seeking the evidence underpinning these claims about vexatious requests made by AI or other non-human actors and by criminal gangs, the government tabled only two articles from the United States and a general reference to some similar concerns arising in Australia without providing any further supporting evidence. Ironically the government declined to release other documents, citing cabinet confidentiality. The cost of efficiency cannot be such a substantial decline in transparency as this. So let me take you through a few key aspects of the bill and the effect that they will have on transparency. I will not speak to all measures on this bill.
Firstly, the bill will introduce fees for non-personal requests. While acknowledging that all states currently charge for FOI requests, this change has attracted a great deal of criticism from journalists, who claim any costs associated with FOI requests will deter public interest stories that often require chasing many leads—many of which don't go anywhere. William Summers wrote, in Crikey, that 'plans to charge journalists to access hidden documents is a disaster for public interest journalism, but a godsend for incompetent officials'.
Secondly, schedule 2 of the bill seeks to prohibit anonymous requests by requiring applicants to include their full name as well as a statement from any person for whom the request is being made on behalf of. This, as critics have pointed out, would significantly restrict the options for potential whistleblowers or even journalists, who may fear retaliation, for seeking access to certain information from departments or public officials. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this bill seeks to clarify cabinet exemptions and adjust the public interest test for deliberative documents.
In practice, the legislation as drafted will expand the exemptions for cabinet documents and make it easier to refuse requests. It principally does this by requiring documents to be exempt from FOI only if they have substantial purpose for cabinet briefings, rather than the current legislation that requires a dominant purpose. This expansion of the definition could easily include almost any document that, at one point or another, has been brought to cabinet's attention. Professor of policy at ANU and respected, long-serving public servant Andrew Podger argues this could even be used to restrict access to almost any document.
Finally, the bill introduces a 40-hour processing cap for FOI requests. My concern with this element of the bill is that it doesn't deal with what I and others believe has become an increasingly adversarial approach to FOI, where the default is to fight the request, rather than to provide it. Costs and time for FOI have increased, as I mentioned earlier, but not because of the volume of requests. The Howard government made about 31,000 determinations in 2006 and 2007, at a cost of around $25 million. Last financial year's 21,000 decisions cost $86 million.
When this bill was introduced, the Attorney-General asked the crossbench to consider these changes in good faith and to not jump to conclusions. I did that—I listened to their arguments and was inclined to be sympathetic to the concerns about security threats and artificial intelligence. However, as time went on, it became increasingly clear that there was not evidence being provided for the claims that were made, but there was plenty of evidence that these changes will thwart the founding principles of FOI. Today, the Centre for Public Integrity released a report fact-checking four of the claims made by the government on this bill. They argue that each of the claims made by the government are demonstrably false, and I would like to refer to these in my speech.
The first claim was actually through a question I asked the Prime Minister in question time. I highlighted the concerns that the Royal Commission into the Robodebt scheme had highlighted with FOI and asked the Prime Minister why, given he has a demonstrated commitment to dealing with the challenges of robodebt and making sure they don't happen again, he was bringing a bill into the House that would actually go against some of the points raised in the robodebt royal commission. The Prime Minister, in relation to my question, said:
So let's not let those responsible for robodebt off the hook by suggesting, bizarrely, that somehow reform of a system that is broken, the FOI system, has something to do with support for robodebt.
I don't know why the Prime Minister answered like this, and perhaps he was misinformed, because, if he had read the robodebt royal commission or remembered this part of it, he would realise that the FOI Act and, particularly, cabinet confidentiality relating to FOI were highlighted in the robodebt royal commission as a major barrier. The final report of the robodebt royal commission said:
However, 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.
The mere fact that a document is a Cabinet document should not, by itself, be regarded as justifying maintenance of its secrecy.
I will quote, then, what the Centre for Public Integrity said about this particular issue: 'It is false to say that the robodebt royal commission did not find that cabinet processes were the problem. The royal commission made a number of excoriating observations about the problems of cabinet processes and recommended the repeal of the class based exemption. It is also false to say that the problem revealed in the royal commission was a minister's act directly in contravention of the advice they were given. The royal commission found that the failure of advice lay with public servants, whose advice did not meet the standards of frank and fearless, even when protected by cabinet confidentiality.' Again, this is an issue raised in parliament, and the government responded, but not accurately, in terms of its relation to the robodebt royal commission.
Another crossbencher, Helen Haines, the member for Indi, raised, again, some concerns about the cabinet confidentiality in the FOI bill and raised this with the Attorney-General. Again, the Centre for Public Integrity fact-checked the Attorney-General's response in question time and said: 'The first is that the changes to cabinet exemption are accepted by legal experts to be an expansion, not merely a clarification, of the exemption. We note here that the government has itself provided no legal advice to justify its claim that the amendments clarified the exemption. The second point to be made is that it is extremely misleading to claim that the amendments are even in part implementing the robodebt royal commission's recommendations.' Again, this is feedback from the Centre for Public Integrity on both the Prime Minister's and the Attorney-General's defence of the FOI bill in parliament in the House.
Briefly, as I mentioned in my speech, there have been claims made by the government that the government has been inundated by FOI requests generated by AI bots and that that may be linked to foreign actors and criminal gangs and that that is the justification for this legislation. Again, the finding of the Centre for Public Integrity on this bill is: 'Despite repeated questioning, the government has, at no stage, produced any evidence of an inundation of anonymous requests generated by AI bots linked to foreign actors, foreign powers or criminal gangs. The highest that has been stated is that the current FOI framework could be at risk or vulnerable to such use.'
Finally, the government also made the argument at times that national security concerns justified changes proposed in the FOI amendment bill. To again quote a finding from the Centre for Public Integrity: 'There is no publicly available evidence that the FOI Act is currently being used by foreign actors or in a way such that the national security services have proactively raised concerns. Rather, the Attorney-General's Department requested advice from intelligence services about the risk of such events.' I find it extremely disappointing to see that the government has justified an incredibly important piece of legislation on justifications that cannot be backed up by facts or by evidence, or where these justifications certainly are not aligned to the facts in relation to the robodebt royal commission in particular, given how important that royal commission is in Australian history.
So let me come to my conclusion. This government has zero credibility with regard to strengthening its parliamentary transparency. They have been awarded a fail grade by the Centre for Public Integrity on their integrity report card, failing five of six indicators, including commitment to transparency. They continue to ignore calls to put in place proper appointment processes that would prevent jobs for mates. They fail to deal with lobbying transparency by, at a minimum, publishing who they sponsor to walk the halls with unfettered access. With this track record and the variety of unsubstantiated claims, it is genuinely hard to believe that the government can make the case that this bill is about strengthening the system. As the Centre for Public Integrity concludes, this bill 'represents an unprecedented and unjustified attack on the right of all Australians to access government information, which is an attack on the proper functioning of our democracy.'
When I talk to members of my community, this is the sort of behaviour that they fear from a large major-party majority. They fear that this sort of majority makes the government of the day overreach and take the support of the Australian community for granted rather than guard and try to invest in the trust of the Australian community in its institutions. This government could use its significant majority in the House to drive a level of transparency across government which would be laudable. The government could look at FOI and say, 'How do we make more of our documents transparent to the community so that we can have more open public policy debates, have more open public policy and increase trust in government?' They have chosen to do quite the opposite.
I am incredibly disappointed with the government in their choosing to spend their political capital and the time of this parliament on legislation that reduces public scrutiny and transparency instead of tackling the hard reforms that will actually make the lives of ordinary working Australians better. I believe the government must do better on this.
Finally, I would like to move the second reading amendment circulated in my name.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Can I check, Member for Wentworth, whether we're talking about the same document.
Ms SPENDER: I'll check yours. This one's slightly—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Then you don't have one circulated in your name at this point. You can take the option to read it in full now.
Ms SPENDER: I would like to use the document as circulated in my name—I can use that one.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: This one?
Ms SPENDER: Yes, please. I move:
That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:
"declines to give the bill a second reading, and:
(1) notes that:
(a) freedom of information laws are there to serve the public, not make the lives of Ministers or public servants easier;
(b) in designing this bill, the Government failed to consult any members of the public, journalists or other stakeholders who use of the freedom of information legislation, only Government departments;
(c) the Centre of Public Integrity has 'fact-checked' four claims the Government have made relating to this bill they argue are false; and
(d) the Centre of Public Integrity has recently released its 'Integrity Report Card' that gave the Government a 'fail' on 5 out of 6 integrity measures, including a fail on 'Commitment to Transparency'; and
(2) urges the Government to urgently address the issues raised in the Integrity Report Card and prioritise restoring public trust in Government".
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this amendment seconded?
Ms Steggall: I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.
Debate adjourned.