Australia’s Freedom of Information (FOI) system is already “broken”, but the Albanese government’s proposed reforms risk making it worse, award-winning investigative journalist Nick McKenzie has told B&T.
McKenzie warned that the bill currently before parliament, which would allow public servants to reject requests requiring more than 40 hours of work, introduce fees for non-personal applications, and expand cabinet and deliberative exemptions, could seriously undermine transparency.
Few Australian reporters know the FOI system better than McKenzie. Over the course of two decades, his investigations have uncovered evidence of corruption, organised crime, and misconduct at the highest levels of business and government. He played a central role in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case, where FOI battles formed part of a years-long effort to obtain documents related to allegations that the former Special Air Service (SAS) corporal committed war crimes during his deployment in Afghanistan.
“The commonwealth FOI system is certainly broken and in need of review. It rarely helps investigative reporters inform the public of vital information in a timely manner”.
“At the moment, important information mostly takes many months or even years to be released via FOI,” a problem McKenzie experienced first-hand in his reporting on the Roberts-Smith matter.
That experience, he says, shows how the FOI framework is being “gamed” by governments determined to avoid scrutiny.
“We need the government and its agencies to stop gaming the FOI system to find any reason possible to block and delay reporters seeking the truth. The intention of the FOI scheme — to improve the accountability of government — is currently seen by many in government as less important than the desire to block the release of matters that might embarrass the powerful. That’s what needs to truly change,” McKenzie told B&T.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has defended the reforms as necessary to reduce “frivolous” requests and ease the burden on public servants, who she says spent more than a million hours processing FOI applications last year. She has argued that anonymous requests create risks of foreign interference and that the changes will allow agencies to focus on “genuine” cases.
But McKenzie said the changes risk tilting the system further away from public accountability and towards political convenience.
“Some of the proposed changes will make the system arguably worse for investigative journalism and the public. Any change that limits or prevents the release of potentially vital public information, such as increasing the power to block the release of cabinet papers, must be resisted,” he said.
The proposed reforms have also been criticised by the Greens, the Coalition, and the Centre for Public Integrity, which described them as “a retrograde step.” A Senate inquiry last year similarly branded the FOI system “dysfunctional and broken” but recommended resourcing fixes and proactive disclosure rather than sweeping exemptions.
For McKenzie, the stakes are clear: at a time when public trust in institutions is already under pressure, reforms that shield more information from release will only deepen cynicism.
