Last September, The Australia Institute launched an FOI request for more information about the proposed changes, which would have allowed the government to deny requests to documents with a remote connection to cabinet and introduce a new charge for lodging a request.

The government had sought to justify the changes by claiming the system was being bogged down with frivolous requests generated by artificial intelligence.

But Australia Institute research revealed that the level of FOI requests determined during the Albanese Government was not particularly high.

When the documents sought under FOI in September were finally released – 150 days after the original request – the government could provide little evidence for why it needed to limit FOI access.

However, the documents were not published on official disclosure logs until one minute before the February sitting of Senate Estimates – too late for department officials to face important questions about the flawed system and proposed changes.

Following a subsequent FOI request by The Australia Institute, it can now be revealed that the timing was deliberate, with internal department documents showing the AGD FOI Requests division wrote to the Web Publishing division “seeking to delay due to estimates“.

Key details

• This year, The Australia Institute sought information about how the Attorney-General’s Department had handled last year’s FOI requests, including one from the Australia Institute.
• The correspondence confirms that the line area within the department sought the public release of a set of FOIs to be delayed “due to estimates”.
• Decisions had already been made and documents sent to individual applicants, so there is no obvious reason to delay other than to avoid scrutiny.
• Today, the Attorney-General’s Department will once again attend Senate Estimates.
• Last week, the Australian Auditor-General confirmed that government departments are behaving inconsistently with pro-disclosure obligations under the FOI Act; that they often take longer to respond to FOIs than the period allowed by law; that they have failed to maintain records in some cases; and that FOI internal reporting is inaccurate in a large minority of cases.
• Australia Institute research confirms that government secrecy is the cause of problems in the FOI system, and that under the Albanese government it takes four public servants to do what only took one under the Howard government.

“The Freedom Of Information system is broken. It was broken by ministers and senior public servants who delay, deny and obfuscate FOI requests, wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars a year,” said Bill Browne, Director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.

“Too many senior public servants see their role as protecting the government from embarrassment, instead of answering to the public and the democratically elected Parliament.

“The Australia Institute’s FOI shows the Attorney-General’s Department delaying the release of information to the public in order to escape scrutiny. That puts a cloud over the public service’s loud boasts that it is consultative, transparent and accountable.

“The Australia Institute warned that the Albanese Government’s proposed changes to FOI laws were based on dubious claims – and it seems the Attorney-General’s Department agreed. Why else would they hold back their own documents to avoid them being referenced at Estimates?”