Labor has today announced sweeping changes to Freedom of Information laws that will make it significantly harder for Australians to access government documents, introducing upfront fees and new barriers in what represents the biggest restrictions to FOI in recent memory.
Despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's promise to "bring transparency back into government" after criticising the "secrecy" of the Morrison era, the government will present legislation on Wednesday that directly contradicts this commitment by charging fees for most FOI requests and banning anonymous applications.
Senator David Shoebridge, Greens spokesperson for Justice said:
"FOI is broken and rather than fixing it, Labor is seeking to make it more expensive and even more impenetrable.
"Information requests routinely take months or years to process, and documents are then heavily redacted with entire pages blacked out for questionable reasons.
"Instead of addressing the fundamental secrecy problems inside the government, Labor has instead decided the issue is with the people trying to access information. That says so much about the Albanese government's arrogance and contempt for the public's right to know.
"The changes propose a fundamental shift away from the principle that government information belongs to the public and should be freely accessible. It's a dark day for democracy that this is even on the table.
"I've lodged many requests for Government information that should have been public in the first place and had to fight for months, if not years, to get anything provided in response.
