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Labor sought the Coalition’s support for its friendless push to restrict access to government documents by offering the opposition more staff, housing spokesman Andrew Bragg has said, just hours after the government ditched the bill before its inevitable failure in the Senate.
Bragg said the offer was made last year after Labor had slashed opposition staffing numbers following the May election, a move that was criticised by the Coalition and minor parties as an attack on transparency.
“Well, certainly the government had tried to do a deal with Sussan Ley to get our support for the FOI [bill] in exchange for the opposition getting more staff,” Bragg said on Thursday.
“Now, Sussan said that that was the wrong thing to do, and she was right because why would we trade a principle position away for more staff.
“I mean, we should never do that. So that wasn’t a serious attempt, I think, by the government. That’s been rejected. And the idea of the FOI reform is to make it harder for people to get access to information. So I don’t think anyone in the Liberal Party thought it would be a good idea to support that idea.”
Bragg said the offer came under Ley’s tenure as opposition leader, and he denied that the government had made a similar offer since Angus Taylor was elected opposition leader last month.
The prime minister’s office has been contacted for comment.
On Thursday morning, Labor abandoned its push to restrict access to government documents in a rare defeat to an increasingly emboldened Coalition and crossbench, who have repeatedly teamed up in the Senate to block the government in the name of transparency.
The changes would have increased costs for freedom of information requests, banned anonymous submissions and limited access even further. After extensive campaigns against what was described as greater government secrecy, the bill was abandoned in a motion put forward by Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher. She flagged that it would be reworked and returned to the parliament.
“The government is taking this step because we understand that it does not have the support of the Senate, and it will not pass the Senate in its current form, but this is an important reform, and the government does remain committed to it,” Gallagher told the chamber at the start of a 30-minute debate on the bill being discharged.
“Freedom of information is a vital feature of our democracy, but the way the FOI system is working now is unworkable. The current framework is stuck in the 1980s, before smartphones, before artificial intelligence and our laws genuinely need to be updated.”
The move to abandon the bill came as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held a high-level meeting at Parliament House in Canberra with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. As Gallagher rose to move the motion, jeers were heard from the opposition benches, with Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie calling out, “good riddance to that rubbish”.
Introduced into the House of Representatives in September 2025, the bill faced staunch criticism from non-government MPs and transparency experts who argued the changes – including the creation of a fee to access government documents – were part of a broader move by the Albanese government towards secrecy.
Leader of the opposition in the Senate Michaelia Cash said of the bill being abandoned: “What a win for democracy. What a win for transparency. But more than that, what a win for the Australian people. Because the government is today admitting the bill they brought before the Senate was going to silence Australians. What an absolute disgrace.”
Greens senator David Shoebridge celebrated the bill’s removal to “the dust bin”.
Dr Catherine Williams, executive director of the Centre for Public Integrity, said the move was “a credit to the parliament” and maintained her call for a comprehensive review of the FOI system.
In the first term of the Albanese government, more FOIs were refused than granted, and Labor has come under repeated criticism for slashing staffing levels of political opponents and cutting the number of questions the opposition has been allocated during question time.
The Coalition and crossbench have teamed up since the May 2025 election to pressure Labor into releasing the Briggs report into “jobs for mates” appointments, and have been waging an ongoing campaign on the production of government documents, which Labor has labelled a “fishing expedition”.
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Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
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