The United Kingdom phone hacking controversy centred upon the now defunct British tabloid News of the World became the catalyst for renewed discussion in Australia about whether we need a new private right of action for invasion of privacy protection. The Minister for Privacy and Freedom of Information, the Hon Brendan O'Connor MP, invoked the...

This paper gathers together Australian reports and developments that advance the creation of Australian Government Information Policy.

The central recommendation of the Government 2.0 Taskforce’s report was that the Australian Government makes a declaration of open government. The Australian Government’s support for openness and transparency in Government has three key principles: Informing: strengthening citizen’s rights of access to information, establishing a pro-disclosure culture across Australian Government agencies including through online innovation, and...

At the 2008 World Press Freedom Day celebration in Maputo, UNESCO explored how both Press Freedom and Freedom of Information can feed into the wider objective of empowering people. This focus built on an earlier meeting of experts in Paris during 2008, which analyzed the link between Freedom of Information and sustainable development. UNESCO also...

Australian Government agencies received 29,019 FOI access requests in 2007–08, a decrease of 25 per cent on the previous year’s figure, according to this report. The report shows that 85 per cent of FOI requests are from people seeking access to documents containing personal information about either themselves or other people. The remaining 15 per...