25 September 2024
Oliver Smith
BY EMAIL: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
In reply please quote:
FOI Request:
FA 24/09/00467
File Number:
FA24/09/00467
Dear Oliver Smith,
I refer to your email dated 9 September 2024, in which you requested access to documents held
by the Department of Home Affairs (the Department) under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982
(the FOI Act).
You have requested access to the following:
Under the FOI Act, I seek all ministerial briefs sent from the department to the office of the
Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration from 29 July 2024 to the present in relation to
the Subclass 866 Protection visa.
Intention to refuse request
I am writing to advise you that I intend to refuse your request on the basis that a practical refusal
reason exists. However, before I make a final decision to do this, you have an opportunity to
revise your request to remove the practical refusal reason. This is called a ‘
request consultation
process’. You have 14 days to respond to this notice in one of the ways set out below.
Power to refuse request
Section 24 of the FOI Act provides that if the Department is satisfied that a practical refusal
reason exists in relation to a request, the Department must undertake a consultation process
with you, and if, after that consultation process, the Department remains satisfied that the
practical refusal reason stil exists, the Department may refuse to give you access to the
documents subject to the request.
Practical refusal
A
practical refusal reason exists under section 24AA of the FOI Act if either (or both) of the
following applies:
(1)(a)(i) the work involved in the processing of the request would substantially and
unreasonably divert the resources of the Department from its other operations
(1)(b) the request does not satisfy the requirement in section 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act,
which requires you to provide such information concerning the document you are
seeking access to, to enable the Department to be able to identify it.
PO Box 25 Belconnen ACT 2616 • xxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx • www.homeaffairs.gov.au
I consider that the work involved in the processing of the request would substantially and
unreasonably divert the resources of the Department from its other operations, and accordingly
that practical refusal reasons exist under section 24AA(1)(a)(i) of the FOI Act.
Reasons for practical refusal
The Department has made a preliminary assessment of the documents that would be captured
by your request.
The Department has identified a total of 255 ministerial briefs that may be relevant to your
request. As it has been identified that a large number of relevant ministerial briefs fall in the
scope of your request, it wil take a significant amount of time to sort through and come to a
final range of documents that meets the scope of your request.
The 255 ministerial briefs contain information concerning 17 business areas of the
Department. As such, the Department must not decide to give access to those documents
unless the involved business area have been consulted and provided with a reasonable
opportunity to make exemption submissions. I estimate that this consultation process would
take, on average, one hour per business area, and require a total of at least
17 hours to
complete. This includes managing any queries raised by the business areas in relation to the
consultation.
In order to finalise this request, a decision maker would be required to assess the 255
ministerial briefs that have been identified by your request. On an average of 252 pages per
ministerial brief, and based on the decision maker requiring 8 minutes to assess each page
identified by your request, I estimate that the decision maker would require
8,568 hours (refer
to the below calculation) to assess the documents identified by your request. This would not
include deciding whether to grant, refuse or defer access to the 255 ministerial briefs to which
your request relates, or to grant access to edited copies of such ministerial briefs, and the
resources that would have to be used to examine the ministerial briefs, make copies, or edited
copies, of the ministerial briefs, and to notify you of a decision on access in your request.
Assessment time: 255 ministerial briefs x 252 pages x 8 minutes = 514,080 minutes or 8,568
hours.
As such, a total estimated time of over
8,585 hours (including consultation) would be required
to process this request.
I am satisfied that the Department would be required to divert significant resources from its
current operations in order to identify, locate and collate the documents held within the
Department, and to make a decision on access to those documents. This diversion would result
in a significant drain on the resources of the area within the Department that would be required
to process this request.
I consider that this would result in this request imposing both a substantial and an unreasonable
diversion of resources of the Department from its other operations and that a practical refusal
reason exists in relation to this request.
You now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable it to proceed.
Based on initial searches, we have identified that a large number of the ministerial briefs pertain
to non-citizens and/or visa applicants seeking requests from the Minister. These documents
contain personal and confidential information which wil likely be exempt if third parties’ do not
express consent for this information to be released.
As such, would you agree to revise your scope to not include any ministerial brief concerning
non-citizens and/or visa applicants.
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Under section 24AB(6) of the FOI Act, you have 14 days to do one of the following:
• withdraw your request;
• make a revised request;
• indicate that you do not wish to revise your request.
If you do not do one of the three things listed above during the consultation period (14 days), or
you do not consult the contact person listed below during this period, your request wil be taken
to have been withdrawn in accordance with section 24AB(7) of the FOI Act.
Contact
Should you wish to revise your request or have any questions in relation to this process, please
do not hesitate to contact FOI at xxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx.
Yours sincerely,
[Electronically signed]
Lyn
Position No. 60186967
Authorised Decision Maker
Department of Home Affairs
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