There was little in the Budget for Australia’s under-resourced integrity agencies, who by the government’s own assessment are not meeting their targets.
Wed 13 May 2026 01.00 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
There was little in the Budget for Australia’s under-resourced integrity agencies (Audit Office and OAIC), who by the government’s own assessment, are not meeting their targets.
The consequences are especially clear at two key integrity agencies: the Audit Office and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
The Australian National Audit Office reports to the Parliament about whether the Government is spending public money “economically, efficiently, effectively and ethically”.
This year, they revealed that Services Australia issued $5 billion in incorrect aged pension payments between 2022 and 2024. Their review into the Australian National University, yet to be published, reportedly finds “that the ANU council did not fully comprehend the risks associated with a massive $250 million cost-cutting program known as Renew ANU”. The Australia Institute’s Allan Behm hopes the Audit Office will turn its eye to the dubious AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.
But according to the Budget papers, several of the Audit Office’s targets are not on track. The Audit Office is not expected to meet its target of 38 to 42 audit reports for the year.
Even the maximum of 42 audits falls short of what the Audit Office used to deliver.
Under the Gillard Labor Government in 2011–12, the Audit Office was expected to conduct 55 audits per year. Even under the Morrison Coalition Government, there was a plan to get the Audit Office up to 48 audits a year.
Over a three-year electoral term, that’s the difference between dozens of government programs getting carefully assessed and those same programs escaping scrutiny.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is responsible for upholding privacy rights and reviewing the freedom of information decisions of ministers and agencies.
Over the years, the Australia Institute has asked the OAIC to review many unsatisfactory, delayed and incomplete FOI decisions. Sometimes, we have been vindicated – with the OAIC stating that agencies were wrong to delay a decision or that they should have provided more information than they did.
But getting an FOI decision reviewed is painful. The OAIC backlog is so large that reviews have taken years – I waited five years for a decision relating to Scott Morrison’s negative globalism speech. By that time, Mr Morrison was not prime minister, his successor was most of the way through his first term and no one was talking about “negative globalism” anymore.
Even now, over 800 FOI reviews have been on foot for more than a year – up from just 81 in June 2018. For many FOI requests, delay is as good as denial.
Given the backlog, a big funding increase would be due. Instead, the OAIC’s total resourcing is set to fall from $43 million this year to $40 million in the next. (Most of this would be for privacy functions, not FOI reviews.)
Ideally, the OAIC wouldn’t need to conduct many FOI reviews, because agencies and ministers would hand over information promptly or even disclose it proactively. The reason the FOI system has gotten so much more expensive than it was 20 years ago is because resources are spent fighting FOI requests tooth and nail.
But as long as agencies prefer secrecy to transparency, a well-funded OAIC is needed to call them out and give the people what they are entitled to.
Audits and freedom of information requests have the potential to embarrass the government or individual agencies, which makes it attractive to starve integrity bodies of funds. But all Australians benefit when these bodies make the government answer for how it spend public money, help people get fair treatment from the bureaucracy and reveal things ministers would rather keep hidden.
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