Labor secrecy 'worse than under five-ministry Morrison'
Labor came to power on the back of a promise to be a more accountable and transparent government.
But fewer Freedom of Information applications, through which people can request access to documents held by ministers and departments, are being fully granted and refusals have doubled.
"The Albanese government is more secretive than a government where the prime minister had five secret ministries," independent senator David Pocock told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
Only a quarter of requests were fully granted in 2023/24, down significantly from 59 per cent in 2011/12, and refusals jumped from 12 to 23 per cent during the same time frame,
research by the Centre for Public Transparency
showed.
The average processing time for Office of the Australian Information Commissioner reviews nearly tripled from six months in 2016/17 to 15.5 months in 2023/24.
"We don't have a pro-disclosure culture within the federal parliament, within the federal government, and that overall is what we really need to see happen," the centre's research director Catherine Williams said.
Independent MP Helen Haines branded more secrecy "deeply suspicious", while her crossbench colleague Monique Ryan questioned why a request for one brief to government on health and disability was redacted.
"This is what the government wants us to know about its reform agenda for a really important issue like health, we are struggling to understand what the government is planning," Dr Ryan said, holding up blank pages of redactions.
"We're looking for transparency, we're looking for integrity in government, it shouldn't be too much to ask."
The Albanese government complied with less than a third of orders to produce documents, compared to nearly half under the Morrison government, the centre found.
That represents the second-worst rate of compliance with Senate orders since 1993, and contrasts starkly with a 92 per cent compliance rate in the 1993-96 period.
Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May said the production orders weren't a political stunt but a key tool for accountability to understand why decisions were made, who impacted decisions and how public money was spent.
The centre recommended improving transparency by establishing independent oversight of Senate rejections to contest when governments make a public interest immunity claim.
It also called for an emphasis on transparency from departments and reduced processing times.
A spokesperson for Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said more than $100 million has been put towards resourcing the information commissioner.
There had been a more than 200 per cent increase in Freedom of Information complaints finalised by the commissioner and a 15 per cent increase in review finalisations in 2023/24, the spokesperson said.
They also pointed to a change in how Freedom of Information requests were reported, with applications that contained irrelevant material that was redacted to be counted as "granted in part" rather than in full.
But Dr Williams said this excuse didn't justify the higher refusal rate.
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