☕️ The debate over FOI requests

Here is today’s riddle: Grandpa went for a walk, and it started raining. He forgot to bring an umbrella and didn’t have a hat. When he got home, his clothes were soaking wet, but not a hair on his head was wet. How was this possible?

Answer is in the titbit!

"If you’re lodging yourself, you need to have completed and submitted your return by 31 October... There’s a bit of a myth that delaying lodgement of your tax return will buy you more time to pay – that’s not true."
ATO Assistant Commissioner Rob Thomson in a statement reminding Australians to file their 2024/25 tax returns. The ATO says 2 million people have yet to do so.

12%
The percentage of new cars sold in Australia in 2024/25 that were electric or hybrid vehicles, up from 9.61% the previous year, according to a report from The Electric Vehicle Council.

Makebate [MAYK-bayt]
Definition: A person who incites contention and quarrels.
Sentence: "My former friend was a notorious makebate, always stirring up trouble between people."

South Australia Police has renewed search operations for a missing four-year-old boy.

Gus Lamont disappeared from his family’s home in rural South Australia on 27 September.

More than 80 Australian Defence Force personnel have joined local authorities in a new two-day search across a broader area this week.

Medical experts have advised there is “little hope” of finding the child alive.

Gus Lamont was last seen on 27 September, playing outdoors on his family’s property approximately 235 kilometres north-east of Adelaide.

According to his grandmother, he was discovered missing around 5:30pm, after she went outside to call him in.

The four-year-old is described as white, with long curly blond hair.

His family described him as a “shy but adventurous” child who has never left the family property alone before.

Gus’ family reported him missing on the night of 27 September.

Authorities have since conducted what they described as their “largest and most extensive” search operation, covering around 470km².

On the fourth day of the search, police said they believed he was no longer alive “due to the passage of time, his age, and the nature of the terrain he is missing in.”

This week, SA Police announced search efforts had been restarted with ADF personnel.

Commissioner Grant Stevens said the renewed search was not sparked by new investigative leads, but rather aimed at “exhausting every opportunity to recover Gus”.

While authorities have not ruled out any lines of enquiry, Stevens said there is currently “no evidence” to suggest foul play.

A taskforce has been established to continue search operations if he is not found at the end of the two-day effort.

Reporting by Achol Arok.

Last month, the Government introduced a bill to change the way freedom of information (FOI) requests are processed.

If passed, the amended legislation would introduce fees for some FOIs and restrict the reasons someone can make a request.

The move has been widely criticised both inside and outside of Parliament, with Opposition Leader Sussan Ley publishing an op-ed on the weekend calling the reforms “a truth tax on accountability.”

Here’s what to know.

FOI requests are a way to ask for access to government documents and records. They are governed by the Freedom of Information Act.

Journalists typically use FOIs to access data, or find out how the Government made a particular decision.

The majority (72% in 2023/24) are from individuals seeking their own personal information from Government agencies.

Information from intelligence agencies and Cabinet documents (meetings of senior ministers) aren’t accessible.

Government data shows Australians submitted an average of 38,000 FOI requests each year from 2015 to 2021.

According to a 2022 report from The Centre for Public Integrity, the proportion of claims granted in full fell by more than 30% from 2011/12 to 2022, while the number of claims refused in full increased by 50%.

The Government has since amended how staff report their response to claims, allowing more FOIs to be listed as completed in part.

The Government introduced a bill in September 2025 to “strengthen” the FOI system, arguing the current framework is “stuck in the 1980s,” before emails and smartphones.

Changes include:

The Government said its employees spent more than a million hours processing FOI requests in 2024, partly because “modern technology has made it possible to create large volumes of vague, anonymous, vexatious or frivolous requests.”

The bill also addresses what Rowland described as FOIs by “anonymous or nefarious offshore actors”.

When asked for evidence of foreign actors exploiting the system during Senate Estimates last week, officials from the Attorney General’s office did not cite specific examples.

The proposed reforms have faced backlash, including from Ley, who characterised them as “a retreat from transparency”.

In an op-ed published in The Canberra Times, Ley said the Government was “the most secretive since Federation,” saying there had been a “sharp rise” in FOI refusals and “an entrenched habit of withholding documents under tenuous Cabinet exemptions”.

The Opposition Leader raised concerns about the ban on anonymous applications, which she argued “would deter whistleblowers and those fearing reprisal”.

Ley said the bill would “redefine the very purpose of the FOI Act,” undoing the “longstanding presumption of public access”.

She said the Opposition would “stand firmly against these changes” and “defend the principles of openness and accountability that are essential to a healthy democracy.”

The Greens have also opposed the bill.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge said: “FOI is broken and rather than fixing it, Labor is seeking to make it more expensive and even more impenetrable.”

The bill is currently before the House of Representatives. It cannot pass the Senate without the support of the Coalition, the Greens, or all independent and minor party MPs.

Reporting by Elliot Lawry.

Leading nutrition scientist, dietitian, and Chobani Yogurt health spokesperson Dr Joanna McMillan explains that not all yogurts are created equal.

Jo says when choosing Greek yogurt, look for one made the authentic way — strained to naturally boost protein, with simple ingredients you recognise.

That means you’re getting all the goodness without adding unnecessary thickeners, emulsifiers or sugar.

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Cabo Verde qualified yesterday by beating Eswatini 3-0, making it eligible to compete at its first FIFA World Cup next year. Cabo Verde has a population size of about 500,000. The smallest country to qualify for a World Cup is Iceland, which qualified for the first time in 2018 and has a population of about 400,000.

Want more good news? Sign up to our weekly Good Newsletter here - we promise it’ll make your week better!

Reporting by George Finlayson.

A German woman has returned an artefact she took from Greece more than 50 years ago.

The woman stole the top of an ancient limestone column from a building in Olympia dating back to the 4th Century BC.

The 9-inch-tall, 13-inch-wide piece was from the Leonidaion, which hosted VIPs for the ancient Olympic Games.

In a post to social media, Greece's Culture Ministry thanked her for her "sensitivity and courage”.

Torben Schreiber, a German curator who helped restore the artefact, said: “It’s never too late to do the right thing”.

Reporting by Rosa Bowden.

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Riddle answer: Grandpa is bald.

On Monday, Hamas released the 20 living hostages it took two years ago, and Israel released almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Speaking to media on a flight to Israel that day, U.S. President Donald Trump said: "The war is over, okay. Do you understand that?" In today’s episode, we’ll walk you through the events of Monday, and explain what we know about the next steps.