Administering the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) – May

FOI Under Strain in Victoria

Victoria's Freedom of Information Act 1982 remains the primary mechanism for public access to government documents, but the system is buckling under unprecedented demand. In the last financial year before 2025, the state recorded its highest-ever number of FOI requests, resulting in delays stretching months and prompting the Victorian Information Commissioner to declare the records system urgently in need of overhaul.

A landmark inquiry by the Parliament's Integrity and Oversight Committee, tabled in September 2024, examined the Act's effectiveness for the first time since its inception. The report criticised the 'pull' model—where individuals must formally request information—and advocated shifting to proactive 'push' release of government data, potentially replacing the Act with a modern Right to Information scheme suited to digital-era needs. Yet the government's March 2025 response deferred major reform, citing the need for detailed analysis of policy, legal, cultural, and resourcing implications in a tight economic climate, with 2026 an election year adding political caution.

Incremental changes have occurred. The Justice Legislation Amendment (Integrity, Defamation and Other Matters) Act 2024, effective September 11, 2024, tweaked the FOI Act to broaden agency obligations for publicly available documents and bolstered the Information Commissioner's ability to resolve reviews informally. Separately, the Freedom of Information (Access Charges) Regulations 2025, operative from June 1, 2025, updated fees—lifting the notice of charge from $50 to $70—while making minor clarifications, though overall charges remain modest.

These adjustments arrive against a backdrop of real-world friction. Agencies grapple with processing backlogs that hinder timely accountability, whether for media scrutiny of public spending or citizens seeking personal data. Critics argue the status quo favours bureaucratic resistance over openness, while government entities cite resourcing strains in a fiscally pressured environment. The non-obvious tension lies in balancing enhanced integrity oversight—Victoria pioneered combining FOI and privacy functions under OVIC in 2017—with practical limits on administrative capacity, especially as proactive disclosure proposals could demand cultural shifts across thousands of public sector staff.

With no sweeping rewrite on the immediate horizon, administering the existing Act correctly grows more critical to avoid compliance risks, review escalations, or enforcement by OVIC.