Albanese’s department among those blocking 80% of FoI requests, scathing report finds
A recent audit report revealed that nearly 80% of freedom of information (FoI) requests to the Albanese government were rejected, highlighting a culture of resistance and delay within Australian parliament. The report criticized the lack of consistent and transparent decision-making processes, indicating that the pro-disclosure objectives of the FoI law were not being met. Calls for a comprehensive review of the FoI system have emerged in response to these findings, emphasizing the need for improved transparency and accountability.
- ▪Nearly 80% of FoI requests to Albanese's department were rejected.
- ▪The audit found a culture of resistance and delay in the Australian parliament.
- ▪63% of requests exceeded the mandated 30-day response time.
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| Original publisher | World news | The Guardian |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/may/20/australian-government-rejecting-freedom-information-requests-foi-albanese |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 07:29:39 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T07:40:00.512Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T09:29:57.591Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | GNlwiVJg7Z3Y |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
A review of FoI administration found there was no consistent, transparent or accountable decision-making around requests and the pro-disclosure objectives of the law were being flouted. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAPView image in fullscreenA review of FoI administration found there was no consistent, transparent or accountable decision-making around requests and the pro-disclosure objectives of the law were being flouted. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAPFreedom of information Albanese’s department among those blocking 80% of FoI requests, scathing report findsReport finds culture of ‘resistance and delay’ in the Australian parliament with more than 60% of requests having longer response times than mandated 30-day deadline Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news…
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