Good morning
I’d like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands we are representing virtually today. I am situated in the land of the Ngunnawal people, I’d like to also acknowledge that there are other families which have strong and abiding connections with this country. I’d like to pay my respects to Elders past and present, and to any First Nations people here today.
Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. I appreciate your flexibility in changing your original schedule as our Office had to appear before Senate Estimates this morning. That is an appointment I could not move, and I am happy to be before you now.
Appearing before Estimates for the OAIC is an example of the accountability and transparency required of government agencies, themes that echo. As is normally the case, we were asked a number of questions about the performance of the freedom of information system.
The main subject of my presentation today is the administration of Australia’s Freedom of Information Act. I want to explore what good administration looks like in practice and how organisations can strengthen public trust, reduce FOI pressures, and support a culture of openness across government.
I see that Sir Leo Cussen, who this organisation is named after, as well as being an esteemed judge, was also greatly interested in administration, in his case as President of the Melbourne Cricket Club for 26 years. It’s impossible to determine whether sports administration is tougher than FOI administrator, but I am happy to admit our office gets bowled a few tough ones now and then.
For those who are new to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or the OAIC, we are the independent national regulator for privacy and freedom of information. We promote and uphold your rights to access government-held information and have your personal information protected.
Our role is to promote information access and protect privacy rights. Within those areas, we have multiple responsibilities, extending over [37 legislative instruments]. It can keep us busy. We have 3 commissioners; we are headed by the Information Commissioner, there is a Privacy Commissioner and myself, the Freedom of Information Commissioner.
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 since 29 September last year.
My role as FOI Commissioner is to build trust in the FOI system and highlight its importance to both the Australian community and the public service.
While I was under no illusions before I started this position, I can confirm there is no magic bullet that will radically alter the state of the FOI system. Its improvement depends on incremental efforts and a strong focus.
During the second half of last year, we were looking at potential change to the FOI legislative system with the Government proposing an FOI Amendment Bill. That legislation has now been withdrawn with the Government proposing to come back at a later date.
However, the potential for further legislative change is no excuse for us pausing with our current efforts to make the most of the current system. We have much to work with already and we should push ahead to make the FOI system work as effectively as it can – and that includes a willingness to innovate.
Australia has a rich legislative landscape. The statute books are filled with statutory realisations of policy and principles. The Freedom of Information Act 1982 is one of these pieces of legislation. It is a demonstration of an ideal. It has flaws, like all legislative vehicles, but the objects it espouses are explicit and larger than the words of the Act. It upholds democratic principles of engaging the people that democracy serves, of allowing debate and informed engagement.
The Objects of the FOI Act include requiring agencies to publish information; providing a right of access to documents; and increasing scrutiny, discussion, comment and review of the government’s activities. These objects are essential to building and maintaining the openness, responsiveness and integrity of government agencies, which the OECD has found to be key drivers of trust in public institutions.
So, the FOI Act is a critical part of our democratic toolbox, but the mere existence of the framework is not enough. Excellent administration is the key to making the most of this framework. And this is where you come in as lawyers and practitioners. You are critical to driving good administration.
State of the system
There are heavy demands on the FOI system. Last financial year there were 43,456 applications or FOI requests to government agencies – a record. So far in 2025–26 we are on track to break that record.
There is a considerable appetite to access information pointing to a highly engaged population.
While the OAIC continues to increase the number of Information Commissioner reviews it finalises, we have received a 46% increase in applications for the year to 31 March, compared to the previous year.
The Australian Public Service Commission recently released its Trust in Public Services 2025 Annual Report- external site, in which a common theme of those reporting increased trust, was greater transparency and communication.
Transparency is now an accepted principle of the Australian democratic fabric. This is reflected in the Commonwealth Integrity Strategy- external site which includes FOI metrics under the outcome ‘Transparency and accountability of actions and decisions are improved’.
Strengthening the administration of the FOI system to assist in meeting that demand for information access, will assist in realising that Integrity Strategy and building trust.
Administrative excellence is key
The objects of the Act tell us to exercise the powers and functions “to facilitate and promote public access to information, promptly and at the lowest reasonable cost” (section 3(4)).
Good administration of the FOI Act means looking for better and more effective ways to meet its objects in practice. Reducing the need for FOI requests by proactively publishing information is one of the simplest ways to improve the FOI experience.
By releasing more information proactively, the FOI system will become more efficient and effective for the community and for government, in that it:
- Informs the community, with enhanced transparency and accountability of policy making, decision making and delivery of government services.
- Builds trust and confidence.
- Improves services delivery and promotes efficiency by reducing the administrative impact on departments and agencies. It is also cheaper and faster than engaging with formal access processes.
- Finally, Reduces the need for individuals to make formal information access requests.
In my view, the space for access requests under the FOI Act should ideally only be information that can’t be released proactively, for example, through the Information Publication Scheme (IPS), administrative access schemes and disclosure log obligations.
Disclosure logs support transparency and efficiency by highlighting information that, when frequently sought under the FOI Act, could be proactively released by agencies. Disclosure logs also continue to be an effective strategy for reducing multiple FOI requests for the same information.
Features of good administration
The realisation of the FOI Act objects is entirely dependent on good administration. So, what does good administration of the FOI Act look like for agencies. These are features that can be expanded beyond FOI and reflect healthy administrative practices.
I think good administrative practice has these features:
- Leadership and culture – an acknowledgement that FOI is not an option. It is a right that the community has, to request information from government and an obligation to do so within the legal framework.
- Respect for the law – for parliament’s intention in passing legislation to enshrine this right and give it real world work to do.
- Proactive release of information – how these rights can be realised in the most efficient way possible for the community (and for government), by proactively releasing information.
- Innovation – how the public service can work differently, including but not limited to the deployment of new technology and tools, to meet the demands of our community and comply with the law.
- Excellence – how FOI decision-making can be effective and respect the objects of the Act, while working within the resources available.
- Respectful of the human-centred nature of government – engaging with those that seek to exercise the right in a manner that appreciates the inherent power imbalance, that explains government decisions clearly and acknowledges the community wants to understand and may challenge those decisions.
- Investigating issues – when they arise so that issues in administration can be raised and continuous improvement can be achieved. It is collecting and using data to identify roadblocks, sharing what works and targeting our collective effort where it will have the greatest impact.
OAIC as regulator
While we are the regulator, and have the ability to enforce outcomes, we are always willing to work collaboratively with agencies and practitioners to bring about positive results. We seek to educate and innovate, and know practitioners can often face significant pressure.
Where we do investigate complaints, we publish the outcomes as a way of guiding our stakeholders towards ensuring better outcomes.
One of the greatest issues in FOI administration is timeliness. The FOI Act has timeframes that must be complied with to meet the objects of the Act. Timeliness is a core part of whether the FOI system feels fair and trustworthy and links directly to the OAIC’s regulatory focus on ensuring timely access to government information.
I want to touch on 4 complaint investigations that we have completed during the current financial year. All of them touch on timeliness and not meeting statutory processing requirements. Each investigation also incorporated a number of complaints with overlapping concerns.
They involve the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), the Department of Defence and the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA). All involved a lack of compliance with s15(5)(a) of the FOI Act as the organisations did not acknowledge FOI requests within the statutory processing timeframe
In the case of the AFP, we found thatitfailed to implement systems and processes sufficient to uphold its duties to comply with statutory processing timeframes under the FOI Act and failed to give early consideration to the need for extensions of time. The AFP did not sufficiently utilise available extension of time provisions to ensure compliance with statutory timeframes in 2024.
As well as not complying with 15(5)(a) of the FOI Act, the NDIA’s disclosure log was found not to comply with s 11C(3)(a) or (b) of the FOI Act. We raised the best practice of ensuring that Documents were made available for direct download, many agencies still provide a way to request the documents on the disclosure log, but do not allow actual access unless you request it- that practice is broadly changing.
DVA, in relation to a FOI request seeking access to documents on the Department’s disclosure log, did not respond in a timely manner, and access ought to have been provided without a formal FOI request.
The Department of Defencewas found by us to have failed to implement systems and processes sufficient to uphold its duties to comply with statutory processing timeframes under the FOI Act, and failed to communicate the delays involved to the complainants.
Many of the recommendations made by the OAIC also overlap. I will use the AFP’s situation as an example.
The AFP is required to update if necessary, its FOI processing manual and ensure that, at a minimum, the manual: addresses the steps that will be taken to ensure compliance with statutory processing timeframes, including the requirement for staff to conduct an early assessment of whether an extension of time, and to ensure concerted efforts in complying with statutory processing timeframes, consistent with OAIC guidance, and Recommendations accepted; to implement.
The AFP needs to make further efforts to keep applicants informed of progress, and engage with applicants to explore options for faster outcomes. The AFP needs to ensure the FOI processing manual is publicly available on the AFP’s website, consistent with the requirements of the Information Publication Scheme.
Importantly, the AFP must provide me with its current action plan, including its 2-year ‘Roadmap of FOI Initiatives’, to address non-compliance with processing timeframes, covering the training of staff, details of operational improvements and adequacy of resources.
In all the complaints I am referring to, the respondent agency needs to show that it has a detailed and measurable plan to ensure it meets its statutory processing requirement and that the risks to meeting those objectives are assessed and mitigating strategies are in place.
I believe that our investigations seek to realise the features of good administration I mentioned earlier, about the right culture, respect for the law, innovation and proactive release of information. They also drive towards ensuring the process is respectful of those seeking to exercise their rights. Agencies and practitioners should be constructive and seek to engage applicants.
The changes we seek are systemic, consistent, sustained and incremental. There is a strong focus on staff training and using resources effectively as a way of delivering a stronger FOI system.
Agencies are already working hard across the system to make it better, including agencies that we have investigated. Our Annual Report from last year highlighted the Department of Veterans Affairs, which experienced a 52% decrease in FOI requests and 29% reduction in IC reviews. From 1,806 in 2023–24 to 873 in 2024–25, DVA identified a major contributor to that decrease being its efforts to encourage the use of administrative access where appropriate. This simple practice delivers outcomes that promote confidence in the agency’s practices but also reduces their FOI request load.
Other agencies are having similar success by deploying innovative approaches and using their resources differently. The National Disability Insurance Agency has made changes to the way it manages FOI requests, deploying case management systems, training and lowering delegations for decision-makers to great effect.
There is a tendency to focus on some of the worst matters in the FOI system, which can be a mistake. Look around you for best practice, make that your focus, and celebrate innovation and achievement where it matters.
This is not about a race to the bottom – it’s a race to the top.
ADM and AI
I will briefly touch on artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM).
AI is a technology that will change the way we live and work. It is exciting and will have applications in freedom of information and can drive efficiency and make the overall system work better. There is the possibility of AI conducting records searches, applying redactions uniformly and identifying efficiencies in systems.
But its use should not cause the sacrifice of fundamental tenets such as transparency, accountability and a human-centred approach. The OAIC has broad engagement with these issues, across by information access and privacy, and there is strong public interest.
An example is the finding from a study directed by information access commissioners last year. The 2025 Cross-Jurisdictional Information Access Study found that a significant majority of Australians (86%) agreed that the government must publicly report on any technology used to inform decision making (including AI and automated decision making).
The OAIC also released earlier this year released a report, “Automated decision-making and public reporting under the Freedom of Information Act”.
Our report looked at whether agencies authorised to use ADM are being transparent about their use through the public reporting requirements contained in the FOI Act – and what regulatory guidance we can provide in response.
Information about decision-making and the exercise of agencies functions is important information for the Australian community. It improves integrity, accountability and trust.
In our report we did a desktop review of the websites of 23 government agencies authorised to use ADM. The review assessed how agencies disclose their use of ADM as ‘operational information’ required to be published under the FOI Act.
The Report highlights good practice but also opportunities for improvement for agencies to meet their obligations under the FOI Act to proactively publish information through the Information Publication Scheme. Only four of the surveyed agencies (or 17%) disclosed the use of ADM in their IPS.
The benefits of utilising ADM technology in government will only be realised if risks are appropriately mitigated and trust is built with the Australian community. A key enabler of trust is transparency and by leading the way in transparency ‘the government can build public trust in the technology and ensure its benefits are shared widely across society’.
Wherever we turn in this arena, we see a demand for transparency and reinforcement of the need for human-centred decision making.
Good administration and integrity
I spoke a little bit about the new integrity strategy and the impact that it has on measuring FOI compliance and timeliness as indicators of integrity.
One of the key issues in FOI is the use of access to documents to drive accountability and explainability. Many applicants, in fact the majority, are seeking access to their own personal information, sometimes including extraneous material to decisions they may have been subject to- for example they may have evidence of the decision but wish for evidence of how that decision was reached. The most effective way to ensure integrity and accountability is for reasons for decision to be clear, accessible and up front. It can also sometimes (particularly in the age of AI) be important for people to know who was involved in that decision. As public servants that can be confronting as what is sometimes seen as ‘behind the scenes work’ is thrust into the spotlight as their names appear on FOI able documents.
There is a tension in the system here, on the one hand accountability matters, so agencies should release ethe names of public servants, however senior or junior, in making decisions. On the other hand public servants are simply carrying out the work of the government and should not be personally accountable for implementation of government policy, so have a right to some privacy or protection as they go about their work. Public service agencies also have obligations to consider the well being and safety of their staff under the WHS Act. These two drivers have presented a series of cases that explore how best to find that balance within the FOI Act, through the appropriate redaction of staff names.
Many agencies seek to ‘scope out’ junior staff names at the receipt of the request, this can be a useful way of balancing accountability through inclusion of senior staff names, while managing the impact on more junior staff, but depends upon agreement with the applicant. There are other exemptions that are sometimes claimed including where the disclosure of names would have a substantial adverse impact on the operation of the agency (47E(d)), that would be contrary to the public interest, that can sometimes be effective for agencies with community facing functions that have special arrangements to manage that type of contact , such as an ombudsman. But will ultimately depend upon the evidence available of that harm.
And finally, the generally favoured exemption seems to be one of personal privacy. I appreciate not everyone in this room is across the Cth FOI Act, so to give some context section 47F of the FOI Act allows the exemption of material if its disclosure would involve the unreasonable disclosure of personal information about any person (including a deceased person), and if that disclosure would be contrary to the public interest. It is a section that is often used to exempt the names of junior staff contained in documents.
I recently made a decision that seeks to find a pathway through the emerging precedents in this area, in relation specifically to the use of 47F of the Act.
‘BAE’ and Department of Home Affairs (Freedom of information)[2026] AICmr 27 (6 May 2026) 'BAE' and Department of Home Affairs (Freedom of information) [2026] AICmr 27 (6 May 2026).
BAE discusses the application of ss 37, 47E and 47F of the FOI Act. This decision also includes discussion about 2 recent ART decisions concerning the definition of ‘personal information’ in the context of public sector employees; Bachelard and Australian Federal Police (Freedom of information) [2025] ARTA 2416 (7 November 2025) and Madden; Secretary, Services Australia (Freedom of Information) [2026] ARTA 423 (20 March 2026). In Bachelard His Honour found that information could not be a mere name to be personal information, it had to say something about the person. Then Madden which said that something about a person could be their name and employment- to understand the two precedents, I adopted a reasoning and interpretation of the act that I think honours their reasoning, despite appearing on their face to be inconsistent.
The approach taken in this matter was to carefully consider the documents in question and turn my mind as to whether they contain information or opinion about an identifiable person. In undertaking that task, I have considered whether the information is ‘about’ the person. In my view, so long as the information that is considered to be exempt is more than a name, more than a mere mention and that consideration, will in my view depend upon the documents and their contents.
Conclusion
I have made it a focus of my tenure to engage as many stakeholders as possible so I can hear first-hand about the issues they have and ways that processes can be improved.
I have engaged with agencies through roundtables, webinars and 1:1 meetings, and have set the expectation for steady and sustainable improvement. I have also committed to continue sharing what’s working in FOI administration, lessons learnt and spotlighting better practice examples. Even sharing small insights and learnings can help others move faster and with more confidence, together, contributing to broader system wide uplift.
It’s important that all practitioners do not lose sights of the fundamentals and the overall objects of the Act. Put people at the centre of the process, work towards solutions, act with integrity.
Positive outcomes will result from consistent, incremental improvements, all under the umbrella of good administration.
The Australian Dictionary of Biography reports that in his role as president of the Melbourne Cricket Club, Sir Leo Cussen was known for his 'tact and kindliness as an administrator' and his ability to preserve harmony and goodwill. Clarity of argument was another of his qualities[1].
I am confident that those qualities can exist in our current FOI system with the right processes, persistence and goodwill, while we work towards a stronger system through better administration.
Thank you.
