Australia’s Right to Know spokesman Michael McKinnon told the Senate this morning the public should have access to cabinet advice, as New Zealand law allows.

“The Public Service Act says quite clearly they [public servants] have to act in a professional capacity; they have to provide full and frank advice.

“And to suggest ... that they wouldn’t do so, because of an FoI application, is I think ludicrous.”

The Senate’s public administration committee is inquiring into the Government’s FoI bills, which will give the public more access to documents held by the bureaucracy.

The proposed laws will also create an independent information commissioner to review FoI disputes and encourage public servants to be less secretive.

But McKinnon, a Channel Seven journalist, said the bills still allowed public servants to suppress cabinet information.

He contrasted the proposed changes with the system used in New Zealand, where cabinet advice and papers are published the day after ministers meet.

"The New Zealand example shows that a cabinet exemption can be more constrained than is proposed [in Australia]. And I’d like the committee to consider that New Zealand can do this and apparently Australia can’t."

Several senior public servants, including Treasury chief Dr Ken Henry and former Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet head Professor Peter Shergold, have warned that more open FoI laws will force bureaucrats to put less advice into writing.

Australia's Right to Know is a coalition of 12 media organisations, including Fairfax, the published of The Canberra Times.