Dear Mr Gothe-Snape

Thank you for your email.

For a request to be valid under the FOI Act, it must provide such information concerning the document/s sought as is reasonably necessary to enable it/them to be identified by a responsible officer who is processing the request (section 15(2)(b)). In effect, an officer should be able to look at the wording of your request, and then look at a document, and be able to readily determine whether that document falls within the scope (and is therefore subject to your request).

Your request generally seeks access to documents pertaining to the "most expensive event" attended by Hon Josh Frydenberg MP in 2016-17.

The Department faces a number of difficulties in processing the request on its current terms. They are:

- The concept of 'most expensive event' is not sufficiently clear. For example, it is not clear what constitutes an 'event' or what costs-basis is to be applied in the assessment whether the event was the 'most expensive'.

- The Department did not organise all events attended by Hon Josh Frydenberg MP during 2016-17, and would therefore not hold all the documents needed to determine what was the most expensive event that the Minister attended during the relevant time period.

- In order to process the request in relation to documents it does hold, an officer would be unable to determine whether a specific document related to the 'most expensive event' without identifying all 'events', then identifying all relevant costs relating to each event and then tabulating them to establish which event is considered the 'most expensive'. The request is therefore not possible to process without undertaking an overarching analysis (ie, creating new documents), as opposed to simply applying the terms of a request to each existing document under consideration.

For these reasons, the request does not meet the requirement that it provide sufficient information to allow immediate identification of documents that are within scope, and therefore it does not meet the criteria under section 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act. This means it is not a valid request under the Act.

The Department would be happy to assist you to make a valid request under the Act.

Regards

Alan Hilvert-Bruce
Senior Legal Officer| Climate Change, Science and Corporate Legal Section |General Counsel Branch Department of the Environment
a: GPO Box 787 CANBERRA ACT 2600
t: (02) 6274 2721
e: [email address]

Note: The contents of any legal advice provided by the General Counsel Branch is subject to legal professional privilege. Do not disclose the contents of any such legal advice more broadly within the Department (i.e. outside the scope of persons to whom the legal advice is (or was) directed), via the intranet or outside the Department without first consulting the General Counsel Branch.

show quoted sections