Prime ministers and opposition leaders regularly use the Midwinter Ball, thrown by the Canberra Press Gallery to raise money for charity, as a platform to expound on the importance of press freedom and transparency.
Last week’s event recognised that the two sides, reporters and politicians, can often be at loggerheads, but in a modern democracy like Australia there is respect and recognition that each has a job to do.
Fast forward a week and – record scratch – the Government was simultaneously tightening access to information and pushing for greater transparency and scrutiny of its political opponents’ backers.
It would be easier to find a pair of trackies at the ball than to find someone who thinks Freedom of Information laws are working well.
Freedom from information, as the gag usually goes.
A system stuck in the 1980s hasn’t caught up with modern times, takes far too long, and too often results in the delivery of pages and pages of blacked-out documents that feel like a waste of everyone’s time.
Sometimes the fastest way to a news story is for the department to come back speedily and say it has no documents on file.
It’s not just a problem for media; more than 70 per cent of FOI requests are people asking for data and documents about themselves.
Think veterans trying to get the compensation they deserve, NDIS participants or visa holders all wondering why decisions were made.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has highlighted cases where malicious campaigners have used AI-driven FOI requests to flood the system or send abusive and aggressive messages.
The eSafety commissioner told surprised senators nearly a year ago her agency had a 2288 per cent increase in FOI requests in a year – a flood that tied up the entire agency’s staff for three and a half months because they are legally required to read and respond to every one.
So, a system that’s not really working for anyone.
But the Government’s response is to reimpose fees to lodge requests – removed when Labor was last in power in 2010 – and ban anonymous requests.
Far from following the robodebt royal commission’s recommendation to get rid of blanket Cabinet secrecy provisions, it wants to expand the definition so more things can be kept secret.
The Coalition was quick to brand the whole exercise a “truth tax”.
The Centre for Public Integrity, in its more measured way, labelled it a retrograde step that wound back scrutiny.
The first-term Albanese Government had few voices around the Cabinet table arguing for genuine press freedom measures. Moves like this make you wonder.
Now – across many portfolios – there are a lot of measures being wheeled out by new ministers that were dumped in the too hard, too controversial basket before the election.
The Government has already wielded its numbers and mastery of parliamentary procedure to duck scrutiny.
There are 1400 questions still unanswered from the last two rounds of Senate estimates.
Changes to question time rules have seen the Opposition lose a third of its questions to the crossbench.
And there’s a tricky move afoot for the Government to take over half the “matters of public importance”, a little-watched time usually granted to the opposition to debate a topic of its choosing.
“Labor has slammed the door shut on transparency… They claim to champion accountability, but when it’s time to face scrutiny, they shirk it,” Shadow Minister Jonno Duniam told this column.
At the same time as the FOI bill was unveiled, an examination of the 2025 election kicked off with special attention set to be paid to aggressive and obstructive campaign tactics, like those used by members of the Exclusive Brethren.
Media visits to polling booths with leaders are always chaotic, but the tactics experienced during this year’s campaign were next-level.
Dozens of people holding Liberal Party signs would materialise seemingly out of thin air and follow Prime Minister Albanese around, blocking the views of cameras, voters and pretty much everyone else.
Even some Liberals quietly aired their concerns at the involvement of the secretive religious group.
The inquiry aims to shine a light on the problem, while mounting a case for the AEC to provide greater scrutiny and insist on transparency from the Exclusive Brethren.
A separate examination was set up in a deal with the Greens to scrutinise right-wing campaign outfit Advance.
Transparency isn’t a matter of lip service and it isn’t a one-way street.
When lights are shone, they should shine on everyone.
Katina Curtis is Canberra bureau chief
https://thewest.com.au/politics/federal-politics/katina-curtis-transparency-has-been-called-into-question-over-labors-mooted-changes-to-foi-laws-c-19893476
