FOI change will favour spin doctors:expert

The Abbott government has been accused of dragging the freedom of information process back to the dark ages.

The Office of the Information Commissioner, which oversees privacy and FOI, is set to be disbanded next year to save $10.2 million over four years in the federal budget.

Responsibility for FOI reviews will be returned to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and the Commonwealth Ombudsman will deal with complaints.

The government has charged the Attorney-General's department with issuing FOI guidelines and monitoring statistics.

"This is a disastrous, retrograde step," FOI expert Rick Snell told AAP.

The previous government set up the information commissioner to provide consistency of decision making.

"Now it will go back to the old days, pre-2010, where every(thing) favours the spin doctors, and the recalcitrant bureaucrats play every trick in the deck - sit on the request, overcharge fees and hide information," the University of Tasmania law school deputy dean said.

The information commissioner was not above criticism but it had made some progress, Prof Snell acknowledged.

"It's been slow, it hasn't been proactive and as pushy as they should be to get a culture change within the public service," he said.

The change could mean fees as high as $800 for lodging an FOI review and that could inhibit journalists' investigative work, he said.

The privacy functions of the information commissioner office will be taken up by a privacy commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission.

The government will have to pass legislation to implement its changes but it's likely to face a road block in the Senate.

Australian Greens senator Lee Rhiannon is concerned investigative journalism will take a big hit.

"It will be harder to penetrate the workings of government and harder to follow the paper trail," she told AAP.

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said the government was clearly uncomfortable with transparency that comes with high office.