FOI changes backwards step expert warns

A former state integrity commissioner has warned that plans to wind back federal Freedom of Information laws will increase government secrecy.

The changes return responsibility for external reviews of FOI requests to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal while the Commonwealth Ombudsman will investigate complaints.

The Office of the Information Commissioner will be abolished.

David Solomon, who reviewed Queensland's FOI laws for the Bligh government in 2007, believes the federal changes are objectionable in their current form.

Savings of $2.5 million did not justify the costs to the public of replacing the effective 2010 regime with ineffective 1982 regime, he said in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry.

"A return to the old system is in effect a system for maintaining government secrecy."