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The eSafety Commissioner has refused an FOI request by The Daily Declaration after identifying 2,600 records relating to our ministry, revealing the breadth of government tracking of Christian groups online.

The eSafety Commissioner has refused to process a Freedom of Information (FOI) request lodged by The Daily Declaration after identifying more than 2,600 records that would need to be reviewed.

The request, lodged on 2 September 2025, sought documents relating to The Daily Declaration, the Canberra Declaration, and Christian leaders Warwick Marsh, Samuel Hartwich and Kurt Mahlburg, as well as associated social media accounts.

In a notice issued on 29 September, the Commissioner said the request would take more than 100 hours to process and therefore met the threshold for a “practical refusal”.

“Our preliminary searches indicate there are over 2,600 documents that reference the names and/or social media handles referred to in your request,” the Commissioner’s office wrote, adding that, “processing a request of this size would substantially impact on eSafety’s operations”.

The notice explained that many of the documents are third-party media monitoring reports, automatically generated whenever eSafety is mentioned online. These reports capture public posts and commentary by The Daily Declaration and its leaders when they have posted about, or been tagged in discussions concerning, the regulator.

However, the volume indicates that significant amounts of data have been stored relating to groups active in national debates about faith, family, and freedom.

I recently submitted an FOI request for any eSafety records regarding my social media accounts and those of my colleagues at @TheCanDec.

My request has been refused.

Why?

It would take eSafety more than 100hrs to process the 2,600 documents they have on file about us.

— Kurt Mahlburg (@k_mahlburg) September 29, 2025

Thousands of Records Identified

While over 2,600 documents were initially found, the Commissioner estimated around 650 of them may be directly relevant once duplicates are removed. Reviewing and redacting this material would, the office calculated, take more than 100 hours.

Sorting the 2,600 documents to identify relevance would take roughly 30 seconds per file, the office estimated. Preparing a schedule for the 650 potentially relevant documents was estimated at over 32 hours, while reviewing, redacting, and finalising them would require more than 50 hours.

“The documents at issue potentially contain sensitive information which may require consultation with eSafety personnel. Courtesy consultation with other government departments and agencies may also be required,” according to the letter.

“I have therefore calculated it will take more than 100 hours to process your request,” the officer stated, explaining that this would substantially divert resources from eSafety’s other operations.

Next Steps in the FOI Process

Under the FOI Act, Australians can request access to government documents, but agencies may refuse requests deemed too broad or burdensome. In this case, the Commissioner cited precedents where workloads below 100 hours were found to justify refusal.

While the agency invoked resource limits, the large number of documents referencing Christian organisations and leaders underscores the scale at which online commentary is being tracked and stored by government offices in Australia.

Moreover, eSafety’s reliance on the “practical refusal” clause highlights how Australians may be left with little recourse when agencies accumulate vast digital records. While intended as an administrative safeguard, the provision can insulate regulators from scrutiny and, in practice, may even incentivise them to store ever-larger volumes of online data — limiting the very transparency the FOI system was designed to protect.

The notice outlined several options to narrow the request, such as limiting the timeframe to the last 3 months, focusing on documents directly involving The Daily Declaration or the Canberra Declaration, or excluding automated social media reports.

Unless revised by 13 October, the request will be treated as withdrawn, and access to the 2,600 flagged records will remain blocked.

The Daily Declaration plans to resubmit the FOI with a narrower scope to secure access to the agency’s data.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.