Read Freedom of Information Commissioner Alice Linacre’s prepared speech to the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) FOI and Privacy Law Conference on 6 November 2025
I would like to commence by fully disclosing without any redactions at all, my thanks to AGS for the invitation to come today and speak to you all at the 2025 AGS FOI and Privacy conference.
I have spent many years engaging with the FOI framework and it is my absolute privilege to be in a position where I can do that all day every day now, having been the FOI Commissioner for six weeks so far.
Having spent many years advising on and supporting FOI decision-making, I wanted to use today as an opportunity to talk about the why.
I see from the program there are many interesting conversations about FOI and Privacy across the day, but I thought it would be useful to start with the ‘why’ of FOI?
So, to start at the beginning, why information access matters?
FOI laws are a means to an end, the end being public trust and participation in our democracy. Good regulation is self-determining; it drives good public policy outcomes.
The Australian Public Service Commission recently released their Trust in Public Services 2025 Annual Report, in which a common theme of those reporting increased trust, was greater transparency and communication.
The importance of information to civic participation is recognised in the open government partnership, of which Australia is a member. A partnership that calls for openness in government and calls for greater civic participation in public affairs, reinforcing a right to information, as per Article 19 of the ICCPR.
Way back in 1982 when the Freedom of information laws were first introduced in Australia, the conversation was about the need for people to have access to government information, to enable informed democracy and to reverse the presumption that information in the hands of government was not available to the general public.
The objects of the FOI Act today also reflect that objective of providing access to information, to promote Australia’s representative democracy and increase public participation in decision-making.
Back in 2010 John McMillan, the inaugural Information Commissioner, said about the significant amendments to the FOI Act at that time:
“The Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) has been in operation for just on 31 years. The Act gave the community a new, radical and enforceable legal right to obtain documents upon request from government agencies and ministers. The exercise of this right more than one million times since 1982 has changed the culture of government and the practice of Australian democracy. Transparency is now an accepted principle of the Australian constitutional fabric.”
On 1 October 2025 Australian Information Commissioners and the ACT Ombudsman jointly released the findings of the fourth cross-jurisdictional study of community attitudes on access to government information. The study, first undertaken in 2019, gives us an insight into the public’s views and experiences of the right to access government-held information, nationally.
The study found that the majority of respondents (91–96%) across all jurisdictions perceive the right to access government-held information as important, with over half (53–59%) rating it as very important.
The majority (86–90%) in each jurisdiction agree that the government and its agencies should publicly report on the information they maintain.
The study highlighted that accountability, transparency and access to personal information are key considerations that people across all jurisdictions believe governments should consider, when deciding whether to release information.
Across all jurisdictions, around 90% of people agree that access to government information improves transparency and accountability, including around 60% agreeing strongly.
So ‘how’ does the FOI act seek to do the ‘why’?
One way to deliver some transparency is through a right to access information, with the ability to apply exemptions, as set out in the FOI Act or demonstrated through regulatory frameworks like the Privacy Act.
However, arguably, the first step in delivering the ‘how’ because of the ‘why’, and providing people with information and the ability to understand government decision-making is through proactive publication of a wide range of information.
The FOI framework, as you all know, aims to drive proactive publication through both the Information publication scheme and the disclosure log obligations.
The IPS and proactive publication
Part II of the FOI Act contains, as you all know, the Information Publication Scheme (IPS). This scheme reflects an acknowledged benefit in proactive release of agency operational material.
Section 8F of the FOI Act has a requirement for the Information Commissioner to review the operation of the IPS. In June last year, the Information Publication Scheme 2023 Survey was published. 209 agencies were invited to participate in the survey and 196 did, that is a 94% response rate.
The IPS requires agencies to publish a broad range of information on their website and to proactively publish other information. The IPS continues to be an important element in ensuring information held by Australian Government agencies is managed for public purposes and is treated as a national resource.
One finding of concern is that the majority (78%) of agencies believed there would be no change to the number of FOI requests their agencies receive if proactive publication under the IPS was increased.
Overall, as noted by the Australian Information Commissioner the survey showed that there is a strong commitment across the APS to the IPS and to proactive disclosure. One of the best takeaways was that 94% of agencies have reviewed the operation of the IPS in their agency, which is an increase from 82% in 2018. However, the results also told us that only 29% of agencies have adopted a strategy for increasing open access to information they hold, down from 35% in 2018.
The survey told us that information asset management, discoverable and useable information, information governance and finding the best way to engage with the community can create challenges to publishing public sector information.
At the time the Information Commissioner said:
“These results indicate that the intent of the scheme is not fully realised. Collectively there is work to do to ensure that the objects of the FOI Act are realised. The FOI Act aims to increase public participation in government processes and increase scrutiny, discussion, comment and review of government activities. We have a tool to promote open government in the FOI Act and collectively we can achieve that ambition.”
We encourage proactive release of material both because it delivers against the objects of the FOI Act, recognising that information held by Government is a national resource and should be managed for public purposes, and because it helps inform access requests under the FOI Act, ideally making those requests more targeted and less onerous to process.
Allowing agencies to consider decisions around FOI access requests for information that is not publicly available, (through proactive general release or through meeting the IPS obligations), in accordance with the exemptions and public interest tests that are intended to find the right balance between this right to access and government being able to operate for the public good.
Proactive publication is something that the OAIC has expressed many views on and is aligned with our current regulatory priorities. Which include ensuring timely access to government information and strengthening the information governance of the APS, as well as rebalancing power and information asymmetries and rights preservation in new and emerging technologies.
In 2011 the OAIC published the ‘Principles on open public sector information’. These are principles intended to assist agencies to understand the OAIC’s view as to what compliance with the publication objectives looks like. The principles ask agencies to consider using open access to information as the default position (reflecting the nature of information held by government as a national resource to be used for public purposes per s 3 FOI Act).
In 2021 Information Commissioners and Ombudsmen across Australia released principles for proactive release of government held information that acknowledged that to the greatest extent possible information should be published promptly and proactively at the lowest reasonable cost without the need for a formal access request.
The benefits being that proactive disclosure informs the community, increases participation and enhances decision-making, it builds trust and confidence, improves services delivery and promotes efficiency by reducing the administrative burden on departments and agencies and the need for citizens to make formal information access requests.
In the 2025 Australian Information Commissioners and the ACT Ombudsman cross-jurisdictional study of community attitudes on access to government information, personal information, reports and data, and administrative documents are among the most accessed documents in all jurisdictions.
Over the next two years, personal information is the most likely to be requested across all jurisdictions, followed by spending and budgeting documents and reports and data. So the desire for information continues and the mechanism for accessing it could be through proactive disclosure and publication of information, data and documents.
Proactive disclosure of information is cheaper and faster than engaging with any form of access framework. It builds trust and confidence, and it enhances public discussion and engagement.
Disclosure logs
Agencies’ disclosure logs continue to be an effective strategy for agencies to reduce the likelihood of receiving multiple FOI requests for the same information. They are also an excellent way to understand what information might be proactively released going forward, thus avoiding repeated access requests.
The data we have received indicates Australians are continuing to access documents via agencies’ disclosure logs. For example, in 2024–25, there were 102,080 unique visitors to disclosure logs, and 237,516 page views.
Australian Government agencies and ministers reported 3,363 new entries on disclosure logs during 2024–25, including 2,651 new entries for which documents are available for download directly from the agency’s or minister’s website (79% of all new disclosure log entries).
Notably last year, there was a slight increase in the proportion of new documents that members of the public can access directly from agency websites in 2024–25 (79%). In 2023–24, 75% of all documents could be accessed directly from agency websites, in 2022–23 this was 80%, and in 2021–22 this was 79%. However, this increase is against a backdrop of 2020–21 when 83% of all documents were accessible to the public directly from agency websites.
The total number of new entries published on disclosure logs in 2024–25 is significantly higher than in 2023–24, when 2,481 new entries were added.
Of course, this increase does reflect the increase in FOI decisions made in 2024-25 and it is worth pausing here to extend my thanks to you in making - or supporting - 25,211 decisions (18% more than the preceding year) and supporting your agency and minister with 43,456 access requests last year - a 25% increase on the previous year.
Active publication on, and monitoring of disclosure logs, is a great way to continue to streamline information access requests. These pro-disclosure activities will assist to streamline the impact of FOI on agencies by reducing the time and effort that would otherwise be spent on processing and decision-making.
What about administrative access schemes I hear you ask?
So Proactive publication matters, but it isn’t fit for purpose for all the information you hold and that the public may wish to access, for example personal information, information about a policy debate, or a particular review that may engage relevant exemptions and release of which may be contrary to the public interest.
The space for access requests under the FOI act, should ideally be only those things that can’t be released proactively.
Equally, although the FOI framework can be a good way to assess information that has all of these elements, there is much to be said for the convenience of administrative release of information.
It can provide a less formal and fast access option for agencies and for the community. Typically, administrative release is useful for requests for an individual’s personal information, data or statistics that are not already available online and policies and procedures that are not available online.
A great example, highlighted in our Annual Report for 24-25 is that of Department of Veterans Affairs , which experienced a 52% decrease in FOI requests, from 1,806 in 2023–24 to 873 in 2024–25, DVA identified a major contributor to that decrease as being that it continues to encourage the use of administrative access where appropriate, which has reduced the number of FOI requests. DVA also explains that a significant percentage of its information release is via administrative access, as recorded in DVA’s 2023–24 and 2024–25 annual reports. This practice delivers outcomes that promote confidence in the agency’s practices, and its results demonstrate the impact of that good practice.
Trust in the future
Transparency and reducing information asymmetries has always been important, but possibly never more so than now.
Later today you are talking about artificial intelligence, a technology that will change the way we live and work. It is also a technology that has been accused of lacking transparency, the black box of decision-making. A technology that utilises training materials and, in the future, may learn and make decisions. There is much to be excited about in that space, including the possibility of AI conducting records searches, applying redactions uniformly and identifying efficiencies in systems.
This is very exciting - whether it does all that well enough and with enough transparency to be relied upon, will have to be seen.
However, in research released earlier this year, KPMG found that Australians are some of the least trusting of AI, so while half of Australians identify using AI, of those only 36% trust AI and 78% of people are concerned about negative outcomes.
In the 2025 Australian Information Commissioners and the Act Ombudsman cross-jurisdictional study of community attitudes on access to government information: in the space of automated decision-making and artificial intelligence, the majority (over 75%) across all jurisdictions agree that the government must publicly report on any technology used to inform decision-making, with the highest agreement for the Commonwealth Government.
As AI becomes more ubiquitous the level of trust and reliance will be aided by the capacity for people to have access to source material, to be able to verify and inform themselves sufficiently to identify problems with the AI interpretation or hallucinations. Proactive release may assist in that verification and confidence. Proactive release may also ensure AI has accurate information upon which to build its capability.
Conclusion
Finally, I joined the office of the Australian Information Commissioner at a time that is quite stimulating. There is a Bill before Parliament that is inspiring a robust conversation about our information access rights framework. A conversation that is healthy, and important, and indicative of the centrality of information access and how getting that access right supports our democracy.
Access to information is a critical aspect of citizen confidence and trust in Government. As AI starts a new conversation about transparency, it is a great time to get the basics right. Proactive release of information can have a meaningful impact on how people perceive and participate in government. Access requests under the Freedom of Information Act are only one element of achieving the objectives, and I encourage you all to make a conversation about publication of information part of your information law practice.
As public servants it is in all our interests to foster an informed public and to provide confidence and frameworks for trust that are the bedrock of good democracy.
Thank you.
