Thirteen times FOI law helped hold governments to account

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from journalists and the public help hold governments to account.

Just as important are the integrity agencies that oversee the FOI process.

These integrity agencies include the Commonwealth’s chronically underfunded Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) and state ombudsman offices, which have the power to overturn rejected FOI requests when they’ve been assessed incorrectly.

If the government respected its obligations under FOI law, having one of its FOI decisions overturned would be rare.

Instead, last year, the OAIC overturned three in four of the decisions it reviewed.

How do we know? Thanks to another FOI!

And when integrity bodies step in, Australians get more details about how government works. An FOI recently revealed how close South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas is to the Murdoch press – he has regular meetings with the editor-at-large of The Advertiser.

According to Rex Patrick, long-time FOI advocate, “For 17 months [Malinauskas] fought like hell to keep the information from the public, but he was eventually ordered by the South Australian Ombudsman to hand it over”.

So, keeping on with that theme, let’s have a look at thirteen FOI stories from around Australia and what they tell us about the policies and operations of different governments:

1. Tasmanian pokie machines – According to documents obtained by the ABC, the Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission wasn’t consulted by Treasurer Eric Abetz on new state gambling machine policies. The Commission, which will be responsible for enforcing the laws, warns that the new laws will “potentially create greater harm”.
2. Artificial Intelligence – Following the release of briefings by Treasury and the Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet, the ABC revealed that “Australia’s stability, renewable energy potential and close US ties” makes it attractive to artificial intelligence company Anthropic.
3. Hobart City Council’s missing refreshments – The controversy over refreshments taken from the Hobart Town Hall elected members’ lounge was revived when CCTV video showed the deputy lord mayor leaving the building with a companion holding a shopping bag. Also among the documents released under Tasmania’s right to information laws was email correspondence listing refreshments removed or consumed within 48 hours of restocking.
4. Exorbitant gifts – the Brisbane Olympics Committee has been offered gifts in the lead-up to the 2032 games, according to documents released under Queensland’s right to information laws, including an $82,000 bottle of cognac, two bottles of wine worth $20,000, Champagne Cognac worth $2,000 and tickets to Australian Open events, Australian Grand Prix events and AFL games. Some gifts, including the more lavish ones, were refused or relinquished.
5. Abbott and Orbán – FOI documents released by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade show the details of former PM Tony Abbott’s trips to Hungary, for his attendance at the Budapest Demography Summit and CPAC events. Abbott was invited to the Summit under Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán’s signature, and despite the FOI request seeking information on departmental reputational risk assessments, no such documents were provided.
6. Sovereign Citizens – Tasmanian police had asked suspected sovereign citizens to confirm whether they aligned with sovereign citizen ideology, and to prove that they were “fit and proper” gun owners, according to documents obtained by the ABC. The Australian Lawyers’ Alliance has warned that this targeting of people risks “authoritarian” overreach, and by the time the documents were public, Tasmanian police had reviewed and changed their process.
7. VPNs and the social media ban – According to documents obtained by The Guardian, the Australian eSafety Commissioner is investigating whether adult sites allow the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass age verification for the social media ban on under-16s.
8. Antisemitism definition – Crikey reported that documents released by the Department of Home Affairs under FOI show pre-prepared answers that officials are supposed to use in response to concerns about the government’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.
9. One Nation withdrawing funding claims – According to The Guardian, the Australian Electoral Commission questioned $800,000 of One Nation’s claimed electoral expenditure for the last election, and “Documents obtained under freedom of information laws show that the inquiries prompted the party to withdraw more than 140 items as it sought to provide additional information to justify almost 15% of the party’s $6.01m public funding claim.”
10. Border Force raids on sex workers – Scarlet Alliance, the national peak body for sex worker organisations, obtained data using Freedom of Information laws that showed Australian Border Force raids on workplaces of migrant sex workers were detecting “very low numbers” of visa non-compliance and “virtually no” incidents of exploitation of workers. That data informed the group’s submission to an inquiry into violence against sex workers in Australia and Thailand held by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
11. Tasmanian greyhound racing – TasRacing withheld videos of forty races from the public because they contained images of dogs being injured or dying, according to documents obtained by the ABC. Greens MLC Cassy O’Connor has accused the government of attempting to “airbrush the cruel reality and the risks of this industry”.
12. Media Watch and Four Corners – Media Watch reported that two episodes of ABC Four Corners were pulled after a search conducted in relation to an FOI application uncovered an email alleging that the reporting may contain “misrepresentations of an anonymous interviewee”. Those findings have prompted an investigation by the ABC’s Ombudsman, and now further episodes have been pulled over similar concerns.
13. Child Protection employees stood down – Following the release of documents under South Australian FOI laws, the ABC reported that 27 staff from SA’s Department of Child Protection had been stood down over eight months, and that there were 12 ongoing investigations into staff over care concerns.

Governments too often delay and deny access to keep documents from public scrutiny. Australia Institute research shows that, at the federal level, the government’s handling of FOIs has become less transparent and efficient in recent years.

Yet, every day, Australians use FOI laws to learn about the internal dealings of government, and in doing so, they strengthen Australian democracy.