Last night at Senate Estimates, Senator James Paterson probed the Australian Public Service Commission on the Albanese Government’s Freedom of Information (FOI) Amendment Bill.

The Commissioner, Dr Gordon de Brouwer, has briefed the Opposition, Greens and crossbench on public servants’ experience of the FOI reforms that the former Labor Government introduced in 2009.

He says that after the FOI reforms, “less advice [was] being put in writing” because public servants were concerned that it would come to light through FOI,  and therefore “people were not putting things in writing that they should be”.

That’s pretty damning for the Australian Public Service Commission, which is supposed to be uphold Australian Public Service values and the code of conduct.

And as Dr de Brouwer says, the problems around scandals like Robodebt were mostly unrelated to FOI.

“Much more than problems around people being afraid or concerned about putting their frank advice in writing to government, they really came down to lack of character, lack of leadership, very poor decision making”.

His briefings have involved the question: “Has the narrowing of FOI … made it harder for public servants to do their duty?”

But by the Commissioner’s own evidence, that’s not what’s happening.

The democratically elected Parliament gave public servants additional duties around freedom of information.

The Commissioner confirms that public servants are evading those duties.

The Government’s proposed solution?

Change the law so public servants can keep even more things secret.