OFFICIAL
DENISON STREET DEAKIN, CANBERRA ACT 2600 AUSTRALIA
NATIONAL 02 6202 6999 • INTERNATIONAL +61 2 6202 6999
www.ramint.gov.au • ABN 45 852 104 259
23 December 2024
FOI reference number: 24/1368
Alex Pentland
FOI Applicant
Sent by email to:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear Alex,
Freedom of Information Request - Consultation
I refer to your email dated 11 December 2024, requesting access to documents under
the Freedom of
Information Act 1982 (Cth) (
FOI Act). Your request is as follows:
• A copy of all correspondence between Royal Australian Mint officials and Assistant Minister Andrew
Leigh from 1 June 2022 onwards.
I am an authorised decision maker under section 23 of the FOI Act.
I am writing to tell you that I believe that the work involved in processing your request in its current form
would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the Royal Australian Mint (
Mint) from its
other operations due to the broad scope of your request. This is called a ‘practical refusal reason’ under
section 24AA of the FOI Act.
On this basis, I intend to refuse access to the documents you have requested. However, you have an
opportunity to revise your request before I make a final decision. This is called a ‘request consultation
process’ in section 24AB of the FOI Act.
Ordinarily, you have 14 days to respond to this notice in one of the ways set out below. However, as the
Mint is closed from 24 December 2024 to 1 January 2025, we are happy to extend the request consultation
period to
Monday 13 January 2025.
Why I intend to refuse your request
Keyword searches undertaken by a Mint staff member resulted in approximately 300 emails (excluding
attachments) and over 70 documents which would need to be individually reviewed to determine whether
or not they meet the terms of your request.
Extrapolating these figures to a conservative average of 3 pages per email chain or document, we estimate
there is at least 1,000 pages of material that would need to be retrieved and reviewed to find documents
relevant to your request. Given your request covers a two year date range, this includes searching the email
mailboxes of former as well as current employees of the Mint. Time take for a document review takes no
account of any third party consultations that would need to be undertaken in relation to your request, nor
time to prepare the documents for release and draft a statement of reasons.
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Accordingly, I am satisfied that this request would place a significant burden on a limited number of Mint
staff and would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the Mint from its other operations.
Request consultation process
You have an opportunity to revise your request. This might mean narrowing the scope of the request to
make it more manageable or explaining in more detail the documents you wish to access. This will assist
the Mint to focus on the documents that you are most interested in, saving time and resources.
Examples of possible revisions include:
• substantially reducing the date range for your request
• providing more details about the subject matter of the documents (e.g. correspondence relating to
a particular issue/event), and/or
• confining the request to a particular document type (e.g. Ministerial submissions).
If you revise your request in a way that adequately addresses the practical refusal grounds outlined above,
we will recommence processing it. Please note that the time taken to consult you regarding the scope of
your request is not part of the 60-day time limit for processing your request, which includes your
agreement to an extension of time under section 15AA of the FOI Act.
What you need to do
You must contact us by COB Monday 13 January 2025 to:
• withdraw your request
• make a revised request, or
• tell us that you do not wish to revise your request.
You can contact us by emai
l at xxx@xxxxxx.xxx.xx.
If we do not hear from you by that date, your request will be taken to be withdrawn.
Further assistance
If you have any questions, please contact
xxx@xxxxxx.xxx.xx.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Royal Australian Mint
xxx@xxxxxx.xxx.xx
Doc. No. D24/62954
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