Freedom of Information and Other Legislation Amendment (Stop the Financial Coercion) Bill 2026

Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (15:43): I move: That this bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill. Leave granted.

Senator LAMBIE: I table an explanatory memorandum and seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows— This Bill will address a worrying trend across Commonwealth Departments that the Government has failed to address.

If this trend is allowed to continue it will undermine the intent of the Commonwealth's Freedom of Information Act and deny access to government information to which we are legally allowed. On 27 December 2019 then opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, addressed the Chifley Research Centre Conference in Sydney and stated: We don't need a culture of secrecy. We need a culture of disclosure … Reform freedom of information laws so they can't be flouted by government.

It is disappointing that despite these statements his government has done everything they can to make our Freedom of Information regime turn into a Freedom from Information regime. In the 47th Parliament the Senate conducted an inquiry into 'The operation of Commonwealth FOI laws' and made 15 recommendations, all of which were ignored by the Albanese Government.

One could easily have concluded that the Government were very happy with the broken FOI system. But they would have been wrong. On 3 September 2025 the Government introduced the FOI Amendment Bill 2025, promoted as a 'reform' package; its 'reform' was in the wrong direction, , pushing the Act towards obstruction and secrecy, not openness and transparency.

The Bill proved friendless. It was friendless amongst civil society groups and in the Senate and the other place—except for Government senators and MPs. On the 5th of March this year, Minister Gallagher had to embarrassingly withdraw the Bill from the notice paper to avoid it being turfed out by the opposition, Greens and the entirety of the cross bench.

It appears that the government wasn't deterred by the Senate's rejection of the Bill, and they have another way to stop information being released under Australia's Freedom of Information laws. FOI is intended to enable people to participate in democracy and scrutinise their government. It allows them to be well informed and make up their own minds about major public issues; not be limited to carefully curated scraps of information the government chooses to release at times of its choosing.

FOI lets people see how government works on the inside and whether our politicians and bureaucrats are really working with the public interest in mind, not just their own political interests. The government has embarked on a different pathway to crush access to information through FOI. In the past three months two FOI decisions by the Administrative Review Tribunal, determining a citizen was entitled to access the information they had asked for, have been appealed to the Federal Court by the government.

That's their right, so fair enough. What isn't fair is that the government has also asked for their costs to be paid if the citizen is unsuccessful in defending the ART's decision. When a citizen goes to the Federal Court, it's all very legal and technical, and unless they are an experienced barrister, they are going to lose.

So, the citizen needs to be able to find around $150,000 to pay for experienced legal representation. That's $150,000 for each of the appeals against the ART decisions. However, keep in mind the government is also seeking costs.

So that citizen could end up having to cover the governments legal costs as well, and they don't have the financial limitations most Australians do. But let's assume their legal costs were to be the same, that's another $150,000 for each of those FOI decisions. So even if a person wins an FOI dispute, they could still lose.

That's a $300,000 bill to get access to information about what the government is doing. People that use FOI just want information. We know from the Auditor-Generals' audit into FOI this year that, across the entities they examined, 54% of FOI decisions reviewed by the Information Commissioner resulted in the government having to release more information.

That means in deciding what information a person could have under FOI, the government got it wrong 54% of the time, and that's a pretty good reason to challenge their decisions. But those challenges will never happen if people fear the government can take them to the cleaners by dragging them into court. In June this year, I forwarded a letter to the Attorney-General with the signatures of 18 parliamentarians, from both houses, voicing the concerns held by the cross bench.

Independents and minor party members alike came together to ask the Attorney-General, who is responsible for litigation policy across the Commonwealth, to intervene and instruct the appealing department to act as 'a model litigant' in the proceedings. Fundamentally, we asked the government to meet the citizens legal costs, for an appeal they initiated—in the interest of fairness, and to ensure that an appeal did not become a mechanism for manipulating other FOI applicants in the future.

Let me be clear, I and my parliamentary colleagues do not dispute the governments right to appeal a decision. But we recognise the financial imbalance. Unfortunately, the Attorney-General ignored that pleading, and instead has enabled a doubling down in reinforcing that FOI wins could be dangerous to the public, by allowing a second FOI appeal to be initiated.

This Bill is a response to the attack on our FOI laws that behaviour represents. My Bill seeks to ensure, consistency with the objectives of the existing FOI Act which states access to government information is to be provided at the 'lowest reasonable cost', by requiring that the Government meets a citizen's reasonable legal costs if it appeals a decision on a citizen's FOI from either the Information Commissioner or the Administrative Review Tribunal, to the Federal Court.

This is not an unprecedented provision. The Bill is modelled off section 40(8) of the South Australian FOI Act which mandates, when a South Australian wins an Ombudsman's FOI review, that the reasonable costs of any Government appeals are met by the appealing department. It's like that in South Australia because the government has recognised they should treat their citizens fairly, and act as a model litigant.

The Labor Government is trying to crush FOI. They failed with their FOI Amendment Bill and are now coming back with a brutal financial tactic intended to keep the government's secrets buried. It's a bludgeon being used to hammer the lid down on the truth.

This Bill will stop that behaviour. Senator LAMBIE: I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned.