Last month, the Government introduced a bill to change the way freedom of information (FOI) requests are processed.
If passed, the amended legislation would introduce fees for some FOIs and restrict the reasons someone can make a request.
The move has been widely criticised both inside and outside of Parliament, with Opposition Leader Sussan Ley publishing an op-ed on the weekend calling the reforms “a truth tax on accountability.”
Here’s what to know.
FOI Requests
FOI requests are a way to ask for access to government documents and records. They are governed by the Freedom of Information Act.
Journalists typically use FOIs to access data, or find out how the Government made a particular decision.
The majority (72% in 2023/24) are from individuals seeking their own personal information from Government agencies.
Information from intelligence agencies and Cabinet documents (meetings of senior ministers) aren’t accessible.
Government data shows Australians submitted an average of 38,000 FOI requests each year from 2015 to 2021.
According to a 2022 report from The Centre for Public Integrity, the proportion of claims granted in full fell by more than 30% from 2011/12 to 2022, while the number of claims refused in full increased by 50%.
The Government has since amended how staff report their response to claims, allowing more FOIs to be listed as completed in part.
Bill
The Government introduced a bill in September 2025 to “strengthen” the FOI system, arguing the current framework is “stuck in the 1980s,” before emails and smartphones.
Changes include:
- Fees for requests, excluding those for personal information
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- Expanding what documents are covered by ‘cabinet confidentiality’
- Banning anonymous requests
- Allowing government departments to refuse requests that would take longer than 40 hours to process.
The Government said its employees spent more than a million hours processing FOI requests in 2024, partly because “modern technology has made it possible to create large volumes of vague, anonymous, vexatious or frivolous requests.”
The bill also addresses what Rowland described as FOIs by “anonymous or nefarious offshore actors”.
When asked for evidence of foreign actors exploiting the system during Senate Estimates last week, officials from the Attorney General’s office did not cite specific examples.
Response
The proposed reforms have faced backlash, including from Ley, who characterised them as “a retreat from transparency”.
In an op-ed published in The Canberra Times, Ley said the Government was “the most secretive since Federation,” saying there had been a “sharp rise” in FOI refusals and “an entrenched habit of withholding documents under tenuous Cabinet exemptions”.
The Opposition Leader raised concerns about the ban on anonymous applications, which she argued “would deter whistleblowers and those fearing reprisal”.
Ley said the bill would “redefine the very purpose of the FOI Act,” undoing the “longstanding presumption of public access”.
She said the Opposition would “stand firmly against these changes” and “defend the principles of openness and accountability that are essential to a healthy democracy.”
The Greens have also opposed the bill.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge said: “FOI is broken and rather than fixing it, Labor is seeking to make it more expensive and even more impenetrable.”
The bill is currently before the House of Representatives. It cannot pass the Senate without the support of the Coalition, the Greens, or all independent and minor party MPs.
