3 October 2024
Oliver Smith
BY EMAIL: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
In reply please quote:
FOI Request:
FA 24/09/01061
File Number:
FA24/09/01061
Dear Oliver Smith,
I refer to your email dated 18 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, please provide a list of Ministerial Submissions sent by Home Affairs to
the office of the Hon Tony Burke MP in his capacity as the Minister for Home Affairs, and
Minister Immigration and Multicultural Affairs from the date of 12 August 2024 to 16
September 2024. Please include: the PDR number, subject of brief, and date sent to the
office.
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.
PO Box 25 Belconnen ACT 2616 • xxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx • www.homeaffairs.gov.au
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.
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 95 ministerial submissions that may be relevant to
your request. As it has been identified that a large number of relevant ministerial submissions
fall in the scope of your request, it wil take a significant amount of time to consult on each
ministerial submission title that meets the scope of your request.
The 95 ministerial submissions contain information concerning 30 business areas of the
Department and 12 third parties. As such, the Department must not decide to give access to
those documents unless the involved business area and the relevant third party 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 third party, and require a total of at least
42 hours to complete. This includes managing
any queries raised by the business areas or third party in relation to the consultation.
In order to finalise this request, a decision maker would be required to assess the 95
ministerial submissions that have been identified by your request. On an average of 92 pages
per ministerial submission, and based on the decision maker requiring 5 minutes to assess
each page identified by your request, I estimate that the decision maker would require
728
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 95 ministerial
submissions titles to which your request relates, and the resources that would have to be used
to examine the ministerial submissions, and to notify you of a decision on access in your
request.
Assessment time: 95 ministerial submissions x 92 pages x 5 minutes = 43,700 minutes or 728
hours.
As such, a total estimated time of over
770 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.
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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.
Initial searches have identified a large number of the ministerial submissions due to the broad
date range you provided.
As such, would you agree to revise your scope to a smaller date range, for example, a particular
week from 12 August 2024 to 16 September 2024.
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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