UNCLASSIFIED
Dear Mr Thorogood

I refer to your e-mail dated 26 February 2016 with the subject 'Child Struck By Yellow Cab At Pedestrian Crossing'.

Please note that your request for documents currently fails to meet the formal requirements prescribed by subsection 15(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act). In particular, s 15(2)(b) requires that your request must "provide such information concerning the document as is reasonably necessary to enable a responsible officer of the agency ... to identify it."

Subsection 15(3) of the FOI Act requires us to take reasonable steps to assist you make your request so that it meets the formal requirements set out in s 15(2).

First, we encourage you to familiarise yourself with the type of information CrimTrac holds by visiting our website, reading about our systems and reading our Privacy Policy. CrimTrac's primary role is to facilitate, manage and administer information-sharing solutions to support police and law enforcement agencies' work in crime prevention, detection and reduction. CrimTrac is NOT directly involved in operational police work. While CrimTrac holds information collected by operational police, CrimTrac staff do not collect information relating to crime, criminal activity, or persons of interest. Therefore, the report you are seeking access to is unlikely to be held within the corporate records of CrimTrac.

Secondly, if you believe the report you wish to access is stored on a national police information system hosted by CrimTrac, please specify which one we should search. Please note that the National Police Reference System contains persons of interest, rather than incidents (such as car accidents). Please also note that not all police information collected by Australia's police agencies are provisioned to the national systems hosted by CrimTrac, i.e. there is no single national police database that all reports are filed in.

Thirdly, please note that we are unfamiliar with the "qp number" you have provided. If you maintain that CrimTrac possesses a copy of the report, please provide further explanation as to what this refers to.

Finally, please consult with the administrators of the Right To Know website and consider whether using this site to request this type of information is appropriate. CrimTrac generally receives requests from FOI applicants for access to their own personal information in one of CrimTrac's national police information systems. The Privacy Act 1988 and the FOI Guidelines issued by the Information Commissioner require us to be satisfied as to an applicant's identity prior to releasing any personal information to them. This usually requires the applicant to provide proof of identity documents to us, or to attend our premises in Canberra to collect the documents.

Please contact the FOI Officer to discuss this further by calling 02 6268 7822 during business hours, noting that we intend to commence a formal request consultation process under section 24 of the FOI Act if we do not hear from you by 3.00pm this Friday 11 March 2016.

Kind regards

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION OFFICER
Legal and Commercial Directorate
CrimTrac Agency | Australian Government
GPO Box 1573, Canberra City ACT 2601
p: 02 6268 7822 | w: crimtrac.gov.au
e: [CrimTrac request email]

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UNCLASSIFIED
Dear Mr Thorogood

I refer to your e-mail dated 26 February 2016 and note that we have not heard from you since our reply on 7 March 2016.

I am an officer authorised by the CrimTrac Chief Executive Officer under subsection 23(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) ("FOI Act") to make decisions in relation to FOI requests.

I am writing to tell you that I intend to refuse access to the documents you have requested because your request does not satisfy the requirement in paragraph 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act (identification of documents).

This is called a 'practical refusal reason' (section 24AA).

However, before I make a final decision to refuse your request, you now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable it to proceed. This is called a 'request consultation process' as set out under section 24AB of the FOI Act.

Revising your request can mean narrowing the scope of the request to make it more manageable or explaining in more detail the documents you wish to access. For example, by providing more specific information about exactly what documents you are interested in, our agency will be able to pinpoint the documents more quickly and avoid using excessive resources to process documents you are not interested in.

Before the end of the consultation period, you must do one of the following, in writing:

* withdraw your request
* make a revised request
* tell us that you do not wish to revise your request.

The consultation period runs for 14 days and starts on the day after you receive this notice.

During this period, you are welcome to seek assistance from me. If you revise your request in a way that adequately addresses the practical refusal reason outlined above, we will recommence processing it. (Please note that the time taken to consult you regarding the scope of your request is not taken into account for the purposes of the 30 day time limit for processing your request.)

If you do not do one of the three things listed above during the consultation period, your request will be taken to have been withdrawn.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Yours sincerely

Sunny Leow
Senior Legal Adviser | Legal and Commercial CrimTrac Agency | Australian Government GPO Box 1573, Canberra City ACT 2601
p: 02 6268 7822 | w: crimtrac.gov.au
e: [CrimTrac request email]

show quoted sections

UNCLASSIFIED

Dear Mr Thorogood

I refer to my e-mail of 11 March 2016 regarding your FOI request of 26
February 2016. As you failed to respond during the request consultation
process (which ended on 29 March 2016), your request has been deemed to
have been withdrawn.

Alternatively, I refuse your request of 26 February 2016 under section
24(1)(b) of the FOI Act.

Please visit this website for information about your review rights:
[1]https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-infor...

Please contact me on 02 6268 7822 during business hours if you have any
questions.

Kind regards

Sunny Leow

Senior Legal Adviser

Authorised Decision Maker Under Subsection 23(1) of the FOI Act

CrimTrac Agency | Australian Government

GPO Box 1573 Canberra City ACT 2601

IMPORTANT: This email and any attachments remain the property of the
CrimTrac Agency and may contain confidential and or privileged
information. It is authorised for use by the intended recipient for the
purpose stated in the email and CrimTrac will not be held responsible for
any loss or action taken in reliance upon it. If you are not the intended
recipient, please delete this email and notify the sender immediately and
do not disseminate, distribute, copy or use its contents.

This email has been scanned for known computer viruses however the
CrimTrac Agency will not be held responsible for any damage which may
arise from opening the email or its attachments.

P Please consider the environment before printing this email. 

The CrimTrac Agency, GPO Box 1573 CANBERRA CITY ACT 2601

References

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