In the senate, Katy Gallagher accused non-government senators of abusing the order for production of documents measure, and said it was being used like questions on notice:

During the Keating government, there were 53 OPDs—when you say 93 per cent were complied with, there were 53. We have had nearly 100 in the last few sitting weeks.

That’s the scale of what we were dealing with. There were 336 OPDs agreed to in the 47th Parliament. Some of those were for documents that are publicly available. Some of them had a scope
that extended to thousands and thousands of pages, and some of them were required to be complied with within timeframes that are simply unreasonable.
On the question time changes, what the Senate is going to do here is rip up the convention of how question time has applied in this place, with consensus, and it will deny non-executive-government members the opportunity to answer questions. So, when everyone comes in here and says everybody has a right to ask questions, this motion seeks to deny my colleagues the right to ask questions. That is what is happening here, on a document that will be released with OPDs. That section needs to be reformed because we have complied with more OPDs than any government in the history of this chamber

Which, OK. But back in the Keating days (and indeed most goverments before Howard) there was a lot more transparency in general about the machinery of government. As governments have become more secretive, non-government MPs (which has included Labor while in opposition) use what tools they have to try and force transparency.