Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (20:40): I'm delighted to speak this evening on the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025. This is an ugly, friendless bill that showcases some of the worst abuses of the Albanese Labor government. It's a bill that's about self-interest and secrecy.

It's a bad bill, and it's been brought on today at short notice. Well before the Senate committee that was asked to examine the bill had been given the chance to give its report, it's been rushed into the Chamber. Why?

Because, when attempting to rush it through this House on Melbourne Cup Day, Labor knows it's backed a loser. It's a day when Australians are paying attention to one of our great national events rather than Labor shenanigans in this place. The government want to concentrate the pain at a time when most Australians are rejoicing in the Melbourne Cup.

It's fitting that the government would pick this day, the day of the race that stops the nation, to attempt to sweep through legislation that would reduce their accountability to the Australian people. This is a government doesn't like people seeing what it's doing. Let me go through what the bill does.

I only get 15 minutes, so I don't intend to go chapter and verse into the problems with the bill, but I want to have a look at some of the wave tops, because as presently drafted it would take much longer to explain. So let's look at some of those key issues and run through those parts of the bill that are most offensive to ordinary, decent people who want to know what their government's up to.

This bill is designed to do two things. First, it's designed to install barriers to make it harder so that people don't make requests for the information of their government. Second, it's designed to prevent the release of that information.

That's made clear in each and every schedule to the bill. Let's talk about the most egregious examples first. Schedule 7 of the bill deals with cabinet exemptions.

It includes some extraordinary powers. This bill allows efficient decision-making in relation to application of exemptions. What this means in practice is that the Albanese government can refuse to search for a document if it's apparent that the document would be an exempt document.

There are some other extraordinary expansions in this exemption too. The cabinet exemption no longer requires a document to have been submitted to cabinet or to have been proposed to be submitted to cabinet, and there's no longer a dominant-purpose test; it's enough if being considered by cabinet is a substantial purpose. A document would now fall under the cabinet exemption if it describes or refers to the contents of a document to which the cabinet exemptions apply, and under this bill the exemption no longer requires a document to be subjected to cabinet deliberation or decision; it only requires it to be subjected to consideration of the cabinet.

You can imagine the scope for abuse by this already secretive government. It would be enough for an email to refer to a document considered by cabinet for it to be beyond the scope of FOI. But that's not all.

Schedule 7 of the bill also expands the deliberative process exemption by introducing new factors weighing against disclosure. This includes prejudice to frank and timely discussion on matters or exchange of opinions between participants in deliberative processes of government. It ties into an extraordinary claim that's been advanced by this government: that public servants somehow are not giving frank and fearless advice because of the fear of freedom-of-information requests.

This is an absurd proposition, offensive to the fine men and women of the Australian Public Service, and it's not supported by any evidence obtained through the committee process. In fact, at committee it was contradicted by all the public servants, who, when they were asked, made clear that none of them engaged in self-censorship because of FOI. Let me say this: the public servants I've had the privilege of working with have always been absolutely professional.

Let me turn to the barriers that have been built into this legislation. Of course, there's the government's truth tax in schedule 6. This is a fee on applications.

This will hit our news media organisations—in particular, smaller and independent publications which run on the smell of an oily rag. It's often necessary to make multiple applications or applications at multiple departments to generate a story. The potentially devastating impacts on investigative journalism were made clear through the committee inquiry.

There's also the removal of anonymity of FOI applications in schedule 2. It's clear that this is intended to be a barrier to applications. Let me make this clear: the government's suggestion that somehow this is necessary in order to deal with vexatious applications, with bots or with national security has not been substantiated.

We will always listen to arguments about national security and remain open to being persuaded, but it's difficult to see how making it more difficult for people to ask for information from their government will improve national security, and we're yet to hear of any instance of a leak of national security classified information that can only be addressed by the measures in this bill.

That stands to reason, because once documents are released under FOI they're public. The identity of the applicant is irrelevant to national security. It doesn't matter who made the request; the information is then in the public domain.

Any collection activity being undertaken by a malicious actor will be done regardless of the identity of the FOI applicant. Otherwise, we're yet to see any persuasive evidence of the FOI system being overwhelmed by AI bots, nor evidence that the removal of anonymity will address this. This was extensively pursued in the committee process, and the fact that the legislation allows for a department to deal with a vexatious application and not just a vexatious applicant shows that the removal of anonymity is unnecessary.

If you can deal with a vexatious application, you don't need the applicant's identity. Finally, let me make clear the point about excluding employee-identifying information from disclosure in schedule 2. This is currently the practice as we understand it.

Employee-identifying information is routinely omitted under section 22 of the FOI Act, and no-one is suggesting that we change the current practice. This bill is just one more in a very disturbing pattern of behaviour that has emerged since May 2022. There's a cancer eating away at the credibility of the Labor movement in this country, and it takes the form of a pervasive and malevolent addiction to secrecy.

This is a government that always tries to limit and control the message. We saw it with the misinformation and disinformation bill, and I'm sorry to say we're seeing it now again. This government's proposed reforms to the FOI Act seem to be the misinformation and disinformation bill all over again.

This is a government that wants to stifle what Australians will say and what Australians will see. This is a government that talked the big game on transparency before they came to power. This is a government that promised to be so much better.

Prior to being elected, Mr Albanese promised the Australian people that, if they chose him and the Australian Labor Party and put them in office, he and his ministers would deliver transparency, integrity and accountability in everything they did. Those are the standards he told the Australian people he'd uphold, and he wanted them to judge him by those standards if he was elected Prime Minister of Australia: transparency, integrity and accountability.

We now know these standards are not the standards the Albanese government and ministers are holding themselves to. The former attorney-general, the member for Isaacs, loved preaching about accountability and integrity, but his government did the exact opposite. These are the words of the member for Isaacs: 'Appropriate, prompt and proactive disclosure of government held information informs community, increases participation and enhances decision-making.

It builds trust and confidence, is required and permitted by law and improves efficiency.' The point they made in opposition was that transparency actually promotes frank and fearless advice. What about Minister Watt when he was in opposition? He said: We deserve answers and transparency.

It is not negotiable—and it should not be negotiable—for the Prime Minister to comply with the standing orders and properly answer these questions. But hasn't Minister Watt changed his tune in government. And what about the Prime Minister?

In the foreword to the code of conduct, signed personally by the Prime Minister, we get this type of sanctimony: Australians deserve good government. The Albanese Government is committed to integrity, fairness, honesty and accountability and Ministers in my Government (including Assistant Ministers) will observe standards of probity, governance and behaviour worthy of the Australian people.

Making all the fanfare he did in relation to this code of conduct, at clause 4, under 'Responsibility and accountability', he says this: Ministers are required to provide an honest and comprehensive account of their exercise of public office, and of the activities of the agencies within their portfolios, in response to any reasonable and bona fide enquiry by a member of the Parliament or a Parliamentary Committee.

What have we seen instead? The tune is now very different. Instead of transparency, accountability and openness, we've seen a surge in FOI refusals.

In the last quarter of last year, data held by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the watchdog overseeing the FOI system, revealed that the proportion of FOI requests being completely refused has shot up by 27 per cent in the December 2024 quarter, and it has only increased since then. By 31 March this year, the proportion of requests completely refused by government, according to its own OAIC dashboard, shot up by 31 per cent.

Meanwhile, this government presided over such a systematic maladministration of the FOI system that its own FOI commissioner, Leo Hardiman KC, resigned his statutory appointment just 12 months into a five-year term. As was widely reported at the time, he was routinely ignored within his own agency, and his very limited staff were being pointlessly diverted from FOI work.

He gave comprehensive and damning criticisms of this government's approach when it comes to access to information. What's clear from the available evidence is that this government has been rejecting and ignoring ordinary requests for information on an industrial scale. We've also seen a government that, extraordinarily, made non-disclosure agreements a condition of participation.

The member for Watson knows this well. We saw this secrecy in relation to his workplace relations changes, where Labor rammed through the wish list of its union paymasters. They also gagged small businesses, employers and the industry groups that were directly targeted.

On issues around such fundamental questions as religious discrimination, all too often we were told by religious leaders that they were only being consulted on a confidential basis and weren't being given the full picture about proposed legislation. Then there's this, from the Australian Council of Social Service's Cassandra Goldie—hardly an apologist for the coalition—who told the Saturday Paper that the use of legal gags had become routine: Broad non-disclosure agreements needlessly stifle meaningful consultation and contribution from community sector organisations and people who hold direct experience and expertise of policies and services.

Non-disclosure agreements also have a chilling impact on community sector organisations. Community sector organisations or individuals may sign agreements in fear of losing funding or being cut out of policy development processes. Additionally, they may not bring through the breadth and depth of expertise within their network for fear of breaching an agreement.

The reason you ask someone to sign a legal gag is to enforce it against them or lock them out of consultation. This government should hang its head in shame. What else have we seen from a government so addicted to secrecy as the Albanese government?

This is a government that drafted secret manuals directing officials how to avoid answering questions in Senate estimates. They produced a document, that was only exposed because of a leak, called Approaches to SEQoNs asked of all (or multiple) agencies. It was circulated among agencies, and the involvement of the Prime Minister's office is very murky.

Rather than being responsive to this parliament, as officials are required to be, this is a manual that tries to direct public servants into not providing information to a house of this parliament. The depths to which they sink and try to refuse access to basic information is ridiculous. Let me give you an example.

In answer to the basic question, 'Has the department held any organised external retreats?' the response that was suggested by the Albanese government is: The data requested is not captured centrally and obtaining it would be an unreasonable diversion of resources. In response to the question, 'How many staff within the department have put in place agreements to work on the King's Birthday or various other public holidays?' it was suggested that public servants should respond with: Substitution arrangements for public holidays are locally managed and data on the number of employees who substitute a public holiday is not recorded centrally.

In response to the question, 'Has the department engaged any external companies or individuals to provide training or advice to officials on the preparation of Senate estimates?' the answer that the government proposed for its officials was: This is not centrally recorded. These are just three examples out of 18 pages of evasion, deception and obfuscation suggested by this government to avoid transparency.

What else have we seen? This is a government that has repeatedly flouted orders for the production of documents. In fact, this government is now so egregious that the Senate has been forced into extraordinary procedural steps like extending question time just to ensure basic standards of transparency.

The Centre for Public Integrity—again, hardly the mouthpiece of the coalition—has made it clear that compliance with Senate orders for the production of documents has fallen to the lowest level since 1993. For a whole generation of Australians, no government has been worse than this one on actually producing documents for scrutiny. Claims of public interest immunity—a claim used to oppose the release of documents—have tripled under this government and are now being made every single week.

We've seen the malicious and petty slashing of staff from all those in opposition and on the crossbenches, whose job it is to hold the government to account. This government broke with decades of bipartisanship to reduce the number of staff provided to those on the opposition and crossbenches. We're not talking about electorate offices; we're talking about the staff whose role it is to be across the policy detail to hold government to account.

It's an absurd and petty use of personal power designed to shy away from scrutiny. And that brings me to the proposals we've seen today—a continuation of a disturbing pattern of behaviour. At a time when transparency is at historic lows, this government wants to push through laws designed to further restrict access to information and to charge Australians for accessing documents.

I have previously said that I'm pragmatic; I will work with government if there are sensible reforms in the national interest. But every Australian should be disturbed by a wholesale truth tax that will require Australians to 'pay to play'—to pay to access information held by their government. A wholesale truth tax that requires Australians to pay to play on FOI sends a clear message: Labor believes information belongs to them, not the people.

Labor have tried to defend this, but they've yet to make a persuasive argument in relation to national security and bots. They're yet to present evidence about unreasonable diversions of resources. In any event, the FOI Act contains carve-outs for unreasonable diversions of resources.

What has this government built? A culture of secrecy, an allergy to scrutiny and a failure to stand by the standards they set themselves in opposition that they presented to the Australian people—and for that they stand condemned.