The former Commonwealth freedom of information commissioner has blasted the government agency and its head, months after announcing his shock resignation.
Leo Hardiman announced his departure in March, less than one year into his five-year term, citing his lack of power and chronic delays in the FOI system.
The legal expert told a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday quitting was the most difficult decision of his career, but he could not "with a necessary sense of integrity, play the game of maintaining the status quo".
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) did not sufficiently engage with FOI issues, with staff often diverted away from core FOI functions for other purposes when it did not make sense.
This created a sense of "complete overwhelm" among the senior workers within the FOI branch and led to "cycles of panic" around Senate estimates appearances.
Mr Hardiman also described a practice of "developing narratives designed to present the OAIC's performance of their FOI functions in the best possible light while distracting from engagement with important issues affecting their performance".
A March 2023 report by the Australia Institute found the agency had been swamped by review requests, with 957 that were more than 12 months old, 60 of which were four or more years old.
The ex-FOI commissioner claimed he told Information Commissioner Angelene Falk the continuously growing backlog could have been addressed by restructuring the team and adding more staff to the FOI branch, but his feedback was not well received.
"The information commissioner said that I should not be involving myself in these matters," he told the inquiry.
"I was flabbergasted."
However, Ms Falk denied this.
"I thought that I ought to be engaged in the thinking about structure and that it would be something that we would work on in a collaborative way," she said on Tuesday afternoon.
When ex-senator Rex Patrick took the information commissioner to the Federal Court over FOI delays, some of which he claims have exceeded three years, the court was told by OAIC lawyers that the issues were a consequence of resourcing deficiencies.
But Mr Hardiman claimed the agency could divert more resources to FOI and "that truth was not being told to the court".
There were seven employees in its communications team and a handful more doing other discretionary work when the OAIC's legal team told the court there were no other assets available for FOI.
Mr Hardiman claimed this was because Ms Falk made a decision that she would only allocate formally unmarked funding for FOI functions.
Ms Falk told the inquiry she "took issue with a number of the statements and points made" and would provide a more detailed response in the coming weeks.
Mr Hardiman was the first permanent FOI commissioner in nearly eight years after the Abbott government tried to abolish the office and subsequent governments ignored calls to fill the role.
