Sparke Helmore's 2025 FOI wrap up webinar

Thank you to all the FOI practitioners and lawyers who joined Chantal Tipene and Molly Campbell for the Full Disclosure – 2025 FOI wrap up webinar on 5 November 2025.. 

It was wonderful to see such engagement and to take some time to reflect on the FOI year that’s been. You can check out the most recent FOI statistics here: Australian Government freedom of information statistics | OAIC. It’s fair to say that it has been an extremely busy year in FOI (the OAIC has reported that the Commonwealth has received 12,359 FOI requests between July 2025-September 2025!).

Many thanks to our webinar special guests Casey Auld from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Stella Majury from Services Australia. The insight shared from their experience in this space were invaluable. 
 
If you missed the session, or would like to watch it again, you can access the recording here.

In the session we discussed:

• how the AFP and Services Australia has been managing their FOI workloads
• section 22 of the FOI Act (including recent Federal Court commentary on this provision and some practical ways in which the AFP and Services Australia use section 22 and scope to assist FOI applicants)
• the proposed amendments to the FOI Act (which we hope to see enacted in 2026), and
• some practical ways to look at resolving external review matters before the IC and ART. 

Our Sparke Helmore Lawyers Information Law team wishes all FOI practitioners a very happy and restful end of year. Whether we’ve assisted your agency through secondments, advice work, FOI processing or litigation it’s been a privilege to work with you on these very interesting and engaging matters. 

Don’t forget to check out our recent article 'wRAPping' up the FOI year and staying ahead of the clock for some tips and tricks to ensure that your FOI team is able to take that well deserved Christmas break!