Government Stalled: Public Outcry as Critical Reforms Remain Unaddressed

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The government is facing pressure to axe “dangerous” reforms to Australia’s freedom of information laws, as it failed to make progress on the legislation in parliament’s final week.

While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese quite literally did a victory walk to parliament on Friday, celebrating the passing of the environment law reform, he was unable to herald freedom of information (FOI) changes as a pre-Christmas win.

There has been broad criticism of the reforms since they were announced and passed in the lower house in September, with the Coalition, Greens and crossbenchers opposing them.

The government argues that the bill will modernise the system and streamline requests for confidential documents. However, critics say it could reduce transparency and make it harder to access information publicly.

Andrew Wallace, the recently appointed shadow attorney-general, expressed his frustration over the stalled progress of a key bill he anticipated would be discussed in the Senate this week. He lamented that the legislation “has gone nowhere” due to the lack of a consensus.

“It would have changed a culture of openness and accountability in the FOI Act, to one of secrecy, and we were utterly opposed to these sorts of changes,” Wallace told SBS News.

Greens senator David Shoebridge said it’s clear the bill has “no friends and no viable path through the parliament”.

“Labor needs to read the writing on the wall: withdraw the bill and start this process from scratch,” he told SBS News.

Currently, the bill is being reviewed by a committee, with a detailed report expected to be published next week.

Among the proposed changes, the bill introduces new criteria under which Freedom of Information (FOI) requests could be denied. Notably, if fulfilling a request requires more than 40 hours of work by the department, it could be rejected.

The proposal will introduce mandatory fees to lodge requests. These are currently in place for all state and territory requests, except for the ACT.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland argues this is necessary to weed out the “abusive and frivolous requests” that delay genuine requests and tie up resources.

They will also remove anonymity to prevent identity fraud and assess security risks, a measure that could deter whistleblowing, including from within departments.

There are also new ways FOIs could be rejected, including if it takes the department more than 40 hours to provide the information.

It will also lead to cabinet exemptions being expanded, with the government having greater power to redact certain documentation if it can claim that its release may be harmful to public interest.

This would ensure more documents come back with a cabinet confidential label.

Independent senator David Pocock said the “dangerous bill” goes against recommendations made in the aftermath of the royal commission into robodebt, which suggested cabinet exemptions need to be narrowed, not widened.

“I will be strongly opposing the bill and think that it should be discharged from the notice paper on the first day that parliament returns next year,” he told SBS News.

“If the government wants to reform the FOI Act, they should do so to increase transparency and make information more accessible to citizens.”

Following the committee’s report, Labor will have the Christmas break to assess its options, with parliament adjourned till 3 February 2026.