Freedom of Information in Australia: How to Request Government Records in Every State

Freedom of information law in Australia is nine separate regimes, one Commonwealth Act plus eight state and territory Acts, and a request made to the federal government does not reach a state agency, so the first step is always identifying which government actually holds the document.

Freedom of information law gives members of the public a right to ask a government agency for documents it holds. In Australia, that right does not exist as a single national scheme. It exists nine times over: once in the Commonwealth's own Freedom of Information Act 1982, and once again in a separate Act passed by each state and territory parliament. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), which administers the Commonwealth Act, states this directly on its own site: "Each state and territory also has a freedom of information law that covers the agencies of the state or territory." The Commonwealth Act's own definition of "agency" confirms the boundary from the other direction, covering only a Department, a prescribed authority, or a Norfolk Island authority. A Commonwealth FOI request does not reach a state hospital, a local council, a state police force, or any other state or territory body. A reader has to work out which government actually holds the document, Commonwealth or one of the eight states and territories, before applying anywhere.

That split also produces two different naming conventions. The Commonwealth, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the ACT all call their Act a Freedom of Information Act, and the ACT's current version is actually its second FOI Act, the Freedom of Information Act 2016, which replaced a 1989 Act. New South Wales calls its law the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009, generally known as GIPA. Queensland and Tasmania both call theirs the Right to Information Act 2009, generally known as RTI. Each of those three reforms is described by its own commissioner or ombudsman as a deliberate shift toward "push" rather than "pull" disclosure, meaning agencies are expected to publish information proactively rather than wait for a formal application. That description comes from the regulators' own marketing of the reform, not from a formal statutory category that distinguishes an RTI or GIPA Act from an FOI Act in a legally operative way; every Act covered here, including the ones still called FOI, contains some form of proactive publication obligation, covered further below.

How Making a Request Works, in Every Jurisdiction

A few things hold true across all nine regimes, even though the specific numbers differ.

The agency decides, not the commissioner or ombudsman. A request goes to the government body that holds the document, whether that is a Commonwealth department, a state department, a local council, a public authority, or in several jurisdictions a court's own administrative registry. The information commissioner or ombudsman in each jurisdiction is a review body a request can escalate to later, never the first point of contact. New South Wales' Information and Privacy Commission states this to applicants explicitly: "Your application must be lodged with the agency that holds the information you are seeking, NOT with the IPC."

A valid application generally needs to be in writing, identify the documents sought, and give an address for the agency's response. Beyond that baseline, the nine Acts diverge on the details. Western Australia and South Australia require the application fee to accompany the request as a condition of validity; the ACT's application section contains no fee requirement at all, because the ACT Act has none. Queensland and the ACT write an evidence-of-identity requirement for a personal-information application into the Act itself (RTI Act s24(2)(d); FOI Act 2016 s30(3)). In some other jurisdictions, including South Australia, agencies ask for identity evidence as a matter of practice rather than under a specific numbered section. The Commonwealth Act imposes a duty on the agency to help an applicant fix a request that does not yet comply, and most of the state and territory Acts carry an equivalent duty.

Personal information is usually treated differently from other information, but not in the same way twice. A request limited to your own personal information is entirely fee-free under the Commonwealth Act, the ACT Act (no application fee applies to anyone), Western Australia's Act, and the Northern Territory's Act. Queensland waives only the application fee for a personal-information-only request, not the processing charge, which the RTI Act separately declares can never apply to personal information either. New South Wales gives a personal-information applicant the first 20 hours of processing time free, on top of the standard $30 application fee, rather than waiving the fee itself. Victoria keeps the $34.50 application fee in place for everyone but waives most processing and access charges for a request limited to the applicant's own personal affairs. Tasmania is the outlier: its Right to Information Act sets one flat fee regardless of whether the request is for personal or other information, with no personal-information carve-out at all. South Australia gives a personal-affairs applicant the first two hours of processing free, not a full waiver. This is not a rule that generalises cleanly across the country, and a reader should check the specific jurisdiction rather than assume free access to their own file everywhere.

Every jurisdiction has some form of "ask first" pathway before a formal application. NSW's GIPA Act structures this most explicitly, ranking mandatory proactive release, authorised proactive release, informal release, and formal access applications in that order, and its regulator's own guidance recommends informal release first. The Commonwealth Act's section 3A preserves an agency's discretion to release informally outside the formal process, and OAIC's own guidance tells the public to "try contacting the agency first," citing the ATO and Centrelink as examples that routinely hand over records informally. Tasmania's Right to Information Act names four separate disclosure types and states in its own text that a formal ("assessed") application "is the method of disclosure of last resort." Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory have a more general permissive provision allowing informal release at the agency's discretion, without the same named four-tier structure.

Comparing the Nine Regimes

Every cell below comes from the Act, the current fee regulation or notice, or the jurisdiction's own commissioner or ombudsman page for that jurisdiction, each read directly for this hub. Fee figures carry the financial year they apply to, because most reset on 1 July. Open the linked jurisdiction page before relying on a fee or deadline figure for an actual request.

What Freedom of Information Does Not Get You

FOI, RTI and GIPA all give a right to documents held by government agencies. They are not the route into several categories of record that a reader commonly confuses with them.

A court's own judicial records. Every Act covered here excludes a court's judicial functions from its coverage, though each does it with a different mechanism. The Commonwealth Act deems a court a prescribed authority only for documents relating to matters of an administrative nature (s5). NSW's GIPA Act defines a court's judicial functions as excluded information under Schedule 2, clause 1, conclusively presumed against disclosure via Schedule 1, clause 6. Queensland's RTI Act reaches the same result through Schedule 2, Part 2, which excludes a court and its registry staff in relation to judicial functions, and extends the same carve-out to tribunals and other quasi-judicial entities. Victoria's Act (s6) excludes a court or judicial officer in relation to judicial functions from being a prescribed authority at all. South Australia goes further, excluding a court or tribunal from being an "agency" in the first place (s6), with a separate document-level exemption for judicial-function material held elsewhere (Schedule 1, clause 11). Western Australia treats a court as an agency but carves out any document that does not relate to matters of an administrative nature. Tasmania's RTI Act and the Northern Territory's Information Act each name courts, tribunals and judicial officers directly in their exclusion lists, with the administrative-records exception preserved in each. The ACT's Freedom of Information Act 2016 exempts information held by a court or tribunal under Schedule 1, item 1.1A, unless it is administrative in nature. None of these gives FOI a path to an actual case file, a transcript, or a judgment still before a court. See court records in Australia for how to actually get that material.

Your own medical file at a public hospital. A Commonwealth agency holding a person's own personal information can generally be accessed informally, through the FOI Act's own access and amendment rights, or through the Privacy Act 1988, and OAIC's guidance confirms both routes exist for the same information. But a public hospital is a state-run body, so a request for a person's own hospital record runs through that state's own FOI, RTI or GIPA regime, not the Commonwealth Act, and often overlaps with a dedicated health-records statute in that state. See medical records in Australia for the health-records side of this.

A police check or your own criminal history. FOI can theoretically reach a police record an agency holds, but it is a slow, application-by-application way to get something that has a dedicated, purpose-built process everywhere in Australia. See background checks in Australia for national police checks and spent-convictions law.

A land title. Property ownership records sit in each state's land titles registry, a searchable public register outside the FOI system entirely, not something requested through an access application. See property records in Australia for how land title search actually works state by state.

Correcting Your Own Records

Every jurisdiction gives a person some right to have their own personal information corrected if it is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or misleading, but the right does not always live in the FOI Act itself. The Commonwealth Act carries its own amendment provisions at ss48-51. Victoria's FOI Act has an equivalent at Part V. Queensland folded its personal-information amendment right into the RTI Act itself from 1 July 2025, at Chapter 3A (ss78E onward), replacing a separate track that used to sit in the Information Privacy Act. Western Australia's amendment right sits at Part 3 of its FOI Act, South Australia's at Part 4, and the ACT's directly inside its FOI Act at Part 6 (ss59-63). The Northern Territory folds correction into the same Information Act as access, at Part 3, Division 3.

Two jurisdictions route amendment through a different Act entirely. New South Wales' GIPA Act has no correction mechanism of its own; the right instead sits in the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998, section 15. Tasmania's Right to Information Act likewise contains no amendment provision; correction instead runs through the Personal Information Protection Act 2004, Part 3A. A reader looking to correct a personal record in either state should not expect to find that right inside the GIPA or RTI Act itself.