The Australian attorney general, Michelle Rowland, has defended proposed freedom of information reforms by citing nearly 600 automated requests received by the eSafety commissioner, but the legislation appears likely to fail after the opposition announced it would vote against the bill.
Documents released under FoI reveal that eSafety staff were concerned in February that an online tool was generating a request every five minutes, with one worker warning that emails flowing in at that rate "may jam something". The tool was a pre-filled form on a free speech activist website that allowed users to request documents eSafety might hold about their X accounts.
The internal chat logs, released to the transparency website Right to Know, show an IT staffer responded that one email every five minutes was "not a concern at all from an IT perspective". But the original message highlighted 50 requests since 1pm, reflecting what Rowland later called "a mountain of frivolous FoI requests from online trolls".
Estimates documents show eSafety experienced an 1,800% increase in FoI requests in the 2024-25 financial year, which the regulator attributed to its rising public profile and regulatory posture. The documents also noted suggestions to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner for reforms to reduce "FoI-bombing".
A separate batch of documents from the attorney general's department included claims from a general counsel that up to 50% of a sample of FoI requests contained AI-generated content. The department's talking points said advice had been sought from the National Intelligence Community about the risk of foreign adversaries using FoI to access government information, in response to the proposed ban on anonymous requests.
The Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, said the opposition would vote against the bill, though Rowland said she remained "absolutely committed" to the proposal, which would also introduce charges for FoI requests and curtail what information could be released.
