The disclosure log Queensland stopped requiring
Until 1 July 2025 a Queensland department had to publish the documents it released under Right to Information, and had to keep a public list of every application it received. Both duties were repealed. Councils were never covered by either — and at Noosa, sixty-eight applications over five years have produced eight published releases.
Last updated 2026-08-30
If you ask Noosa Council for documents under the Right to Information Act 2009 and win, council may put what it releases on its website. It does not have to. It never has.
That is not a criticism of Noosa. It is what the Act says, and for most of the Act's life it said something better about the state government. Until 1 July 2025 there were two disclosure-log sections sitting side by side:
| Departments and Ministers | Local governments | |
|---|---|---|
| Publish the documents released | must — s 78(3) | may — s 78A |
| Keep a public list of every application received | must — s 78(2) | no duty |
Section 78 was titled, in the Act itself, "Disclosure logs—departments and Ministers". Section 78A was titled "Disclosure logs—other agencies". The line between them is drawn in s 14(1), which defines an agency as "(a) a department; or (b) a local government; or (c) a public authority" and so on. A council is an agency. A council is not a department. It sat in the second column, always.
What went on 1 July 2025
The Information Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2023 commenced that day. Section 78 is in the consolidation in force on 1 June 2025 and gone from the one in force on 1 July. What went with it:
- the only mandatory duty to publish an RTI release anywhere in the Act. No Queensland agency now has one.
- the public list of applications. Old s 78(2) made a department record, for every valid application, "details of the information being sought by the applicant, as stated in the application" and "the date the application was made" — as soon as practicable after it arrived, and whatever the outcome. That was a register of what people were asking government for. It no longer exists.
- the hook to ministerial standards. The 2023 consolidation carried two duties to comply "with any guidelines published by the Minister on the Minister's website" — s 78B(1) for disclosure logs, s 21(3) for publication schemes. The current consolidation carries neither.
What survives is s 78A, which now covers everyone and says a released document may be included in a disclosure log. It says "may" three times.
The only "must" left anywhere near a disclosure log is s 78B, and it points the other way: an agency must delete from anything it does publish any information that is prevented from publication by law, may be defamatory, would unreasonably invade privacy, was communicated in confidence, is protected by contract, or would cause substantial harm.
There is still a mandatory publication scheme under s 21 — every agency must publish its structure, its functions, the types of information it holds and how to ask for them. That is a description of the filing cabinet. It is not the contents, and it says nothing about the outcome of any application.
Nothing in the Local Government Act 2009 or the Local Government Regulation 2012 mentions right to information or disclosure logs at all.
What discretion produces at Noosa
Council reports its RTI numbers in each annual report. Five years:
| Financial year | Applications received | Finalised | Pages released | Pages refused |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020–21 | 24 | 19 | 1,284 | 812 |
| 2021–22 | 15 | 11 | 728 | 474 |
| 2022–23 | 5 | 2 | 42 | 144 |
| 2023–24 | 16 | 13 | 440 | 433 |
| 2024–25 | 8 | 5 | 174 | 132 |
| Total | 68 | 50 |
Against sixty-eight applications, council's disclosure log holds eight releases, and four of those eight are the same subject — documents about the use and operation of the Noosa Airport, released across 2021 and 2022, sixty-five megabytes between them. Council began Planning & Environment Court proceedings over the Noosa Airfield in 2024. The applications ran two to three years ahead of it.
Four out of eight on one contested subject is not a coincidence, and it is not generosity either. It is what a disclosure log is for: publish once, and the fifth person reads it instead of lodging an application somebody has to process. The Act reinforces that with a charging rule most people never see. Under s 78A(5), once one applicant has paid the access charge, "no further charge is payable for access to the document by any person". After the first requester, council cannot recover the cost from anyone anyway.
Eight out of sixty-eight is also not as damning as it first looks, and the reasons are structural rather than discretionary. Section 78A(1) only permits publication where the document does not contain the applicant's personal information, and most requests to a council are people seeking their own records. Applications get withdrawn — three in 2022–23, two in 2024–25. And a great deal of what is assessed is never released at all: across these five years council refused nearly as many pages as it released.
The year with nothing in it
One line in the table does not fit. In 2023–24 council received sixteen applications, finalised thirteen, and released 440 pages — the second-busiest year in the series.
Council's disclosure log contains no release numbered RTI24 at all.
That was before the repeal, so nothing about it was unlawful; a council's disclosure log has been discretionary throughout. But it is the difference between a discretion exercised and a discretion unused, and it is the obvious question to put to council: of the thirteen applications finalised in 2023–24 and the 440 pages released, was any of it eligible for the log, and if so what decided against publishing it?
There is a visible change in practice around the same point. The releases from
2021 to 2023 sit at the top level of council's document store, named
rti######___released_documents.pdf. The two from 2025 and 2026 sit in a
different folder, named rti######-disclosure-log-release_DATE.pdf. Something
about how this is done changed between them.
Why it matters more now than it did
For Noosa, the 1 July 2025 repeal changes nothing: the mandatory section never applied to councils, and what council does with its log today is what it could always have done. Anyone reading this as a duty council has lost has it wrong.
What changed is the floor under everybody else. Before that date a resident who wanted to know what was being asked of a Queensland department could read the list, because the department had to keep one. There was a published standard for what a disclosure log should look like, because the Act required compliance with the Minister's guidelines. Both are gone, and what replaced them is a single section that says an agency may publish if it likes.
Councils are now held to exactly the standard they were always held to. The state has come down to meet them.
Sources. All statutory text is quoted from the Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld) as published by the Queensland Parliamentary Counsel: the current consolidation, current as at 1 July 2026, and the consolidation current as at 1 March 2023 for the sections since repealed. The commencement date is established by comparing the consolidations in force on 1 June and 1 July 2025; the amending Act is named in the Act's own part 9, "Transitional provisions for Information Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2023". Application numbers, pages released and pages refused are council's own, from the Right to Information table in each of its annual reports for 2020–21 to 2024–25. The disclosure log holdings are the eight documents council publishes in its Right to Information releases series. The court proceeding is Noosa Shire Council v Noosa Airfield Pty Ltd & Anor (No 2) [2024] QPEC 38 and the substantive proceeding behind it. Nothing here alleges that council has failed to meet an obligation: on the evidence set out above, it has not had one.