A Freedom of Information (FOI) barometer would indicate a significant shift in the prevailing attitudinal responses to access to government held information at the state level in Australia in recent years. The responses would vary between jurisdictions but only in terms of details not substance. What began as a few recitations of concern about delays, application of exemptions and fees has now metamorphosed into a strong phalanx of information commissioners, parliamentary committees, ombudsman and others seeking fundamental reforms. In 1994 Spencer Zifcak argued that the history of FOI in Victoria could be seen as proceeding through three phases - optimism, pessimism, revisionism. The Zifcak typology could be expanded Australia-wide with a fourth stage being added; namely, a return to fundamentals.

In the period up to December 1998 a number of factors had placed state FOI regimes under considerable stress.

In an oft-cited passage from Attorney-General (NSW) v Quin Brennan J identified the scope of judicial review in terms which bear repeating:

The passage emphasized the centrality of the distinction between review for error of law and merits review. However, the qualification that the dichotomy, which is so readily stated in principle, is not always easy to apply in practice is also well-taken.

It is clear that tribunals are a permanent feature of the administrative law landscape. The concept of merit review of administrative decisions by bodies other than courts has survived initial resistance from the executive, distrust by the courts, the managerialist pressures of the 1980s, and the downsizing, outsourcing movements of the 1990s. As Pearce commented, the recommendation in the Better Decisions report in 1995—the most comprehensive examination of the Commonwealth's merit review system since the 1970s—that merits review tribunals should be retained, albeit in a more integrated structure, is evidence of that acceptance. The Coalition Government, not without some struggle, broadly accepted that recommendation and the results, in the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2000 (ART Bill) and the Administrative Review Tribunal (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2000 (ART (CTP) Bill) attest to that response. Such a development shows how far we have come in twenty five years. In the States and Territories, there has been the same process of slow acceptance followed by expanded use of tribunals, many of them dealing with work previously done by courts.

What has led to this position? Tribunals have certain characteristics, which often given them advantages over the courts. As the Franks Committee in the United Kingdom noted in the 1950s, these include ‘cheapness, accessibility, freedom from technicality, expedition and expert knowledge of their particular subject’.