Gibbings: FOI bill could weaken ‘legacy media’

De­bate will be held in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day (Wednes­day) on the Gov­ern­ment's bill to re­move the re­quire­ment for State agen­cies to pub­lish an­nu­al pub­lic state­ments in a dai­ly news­pa­per and re­place it with a re­quire­ment for those state­ments to be pub­lished ei­ther in a news­pa­per or on a pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble web­site.

The Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, was al­ready passed in the Sen­ate last Fri­day. In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Wes­ley Gib­bings, a jour­nal­ist of 40 years' stand­ing, vot­ed against the bill.

Gib­bings said he saw in the bill the po­ten­tial to be dis­rup­tive rather than pos­i­tive. He said the dan­ger re­sides in the bill's stip­u­la­tion for pub­li­ca­tion "ei­ther/or", and he saw no need for this "since Gov­ern­ment is digi­tis­ing sys­tems".