STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (13:55): Before the Albanese government were elected in 2022, they promised the Australian people that they would strengthen our freedom-of-information laws. They promised they would be more transparent. They promised that they would do a better job than the Morrison government.
They are now halfway through their second term and not only have they done nothing to protect Australia's freedom-of-information laws, but they are trying to make it harder for Australians to access documents. It's as simple as that. Last year, they brought a bill on which they said was an FOI reform package—yes, funny!—but it was, in fact, a bill designed to weaken our FOI laws in favour of the government so it can be even less transparent.
That bill had no mates, and I wonder why. Thanks to the pressure from the crossbench and civil society groups, the government shelved that bill in February this year. Now, they are trying to scare Australian citizens off putting in an FOI request in the first place.
In the past three months, two FOI wins by former senator Rex Patrick have been appealed to the Federal Court, with one of those orders being sought for costs if the citizen is unsuccessful in defending his win. If this precedent stands, it means that Australians could be facing costs even if, like Rex, they won their case. In other words, even if you win your FOI case, you still lose big time.
See you later to the house you're living in. Australians know the term coercive control. What the federal Labor government is doing is financial coercion.
As Geoffrey Watson told the media today: 'This is a typical litigation tactic of the well-heeled bully. It says it all.' I am introducing a bill that will ensure that the government meets a citizen's reasonable legal costs if it appeals the citizen's FOI win to the Federal Court from either the information commissioner or the Administrative Review Tribunal. Australians have lost trust in this government and lost trust in politicians.
Behaviour like this is not helping. If the government want to get people to trust them, then they should stop this financial coercion now and support the bill.