Dear Office of the Australian Information Commissioner,

Under s 15(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act), I make a s 15(2) compliant request for access for the following scope below.

This request is an application for the purposes of the FOI Act and notices under the FOI Act are to be sent to email address this request came from.

This application is in three parts:

Firstly, [with redaction of any email address of mine, given it is to be publicly published] full copy of the email received by the OAIC at 12:58pm (by the FOIDR inbox and employee Ms Amanda Nowland) on Wednesday 6 November 2019 from Julie A.

Secondly, full copy (including the attachment, in full) [with redaction of any email address of mine, given it is to be publicly published], of the email sent by OAIC employee Ms Amanda Nowland to Julie A. at 10:07pm on Wednesday 6 November 2019.

Thirdly, any document held by the OAIC that identifies the specific “personal information” in the FOIREQ19/00196 documents had withheld allegedly under s 27(A) until it released them at 10:07pm on Wednesday 6 November 2019, that the OAIC based its claim of that it had an alleged reasonable belief contained the personal information of a third party, that if released could constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy contrary to the public interest, and that therefore should be withheld under s 27(A) until that third party had used all its review rights, or allowed them to lapse, against access being granted. [To assist you, I have included after the close the same requirements as outlined to Ms Nowland to enliven s 27(A)]

Ciao,

Julie

s 27A is only to be used where there is a ‘reasonably held’ opinion that the document contains material, that if released, could reasonably pose an unreasonable invasion of that third party’s privacy, that disclosure of which would be contrary to the public interest.

What constitutes ‘unreasonable invasion’ requires “a consideration of all circumstances, including the nature of the information that would be disclosed, the circumstances in which the information was obtained, the likelihood of the information being information that the person concerned would not wish to have disclosed without consent, and whether the information has any current relevance” to the FOI scope, to be weighed against the positive duty to disclose under the Act (unless no public purpose would be achieved through release).

Another relevant factor is the weight of any detriment that disclosure may cause to the person to whom the information relates.

But the overwhelming test is that if the alleged disclosure is one that would constitute an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy, but “were of no demonstrable relevance to the affairs of government” then s 47F redaction is to be used in lieu of s 27A third party consultation.

Dear Megan McKenna,

Yes, that should read am, not pm, so the corrected scope is:

Firstly, [with redaction of any email address of mine, and my full name where it appears, given it is to be publicly published] full copy of the email received by the OAIC at 12:58pm (by the FOIDR inbox and employee Ms Amanda Nowland) on Wednesday 6 November 2019 from Julie A.

Secondly, full copy (including the attachment, in full) [with redaction of any email address of mine, and my full name where it appears, given it is to be publicly published], of the email sent by OAIC employee Ms Amanda Nowland to Julie A. at 10:07am on Wednesday 6 November 2019.

Thirdly, any document held by the OAIC that identifies the specific “personal information” in the FOIREQ19/00196 documents the OAIC employee Ms Amanda Nowland had withheld allegedly under s 27(A), until she released them at 10:07pm on Wednesday 6 November 2019, that the OAIC based its claim that it had an alleged reasonable belief that the withheld documents contained the personal information of a third party, that if released could constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy contrary to the public interest, and that therefore should be withheld under s 27(A) until that third party had used all its review rights, or allowed them to lapse, against access being granted. [To assist you, I have included after the close the same requirements as outlined to Ms Nowland to enliven s 27(A)]

To avoid doubt, ‘Julie A.’ is fine to publish, but my full name is not, nor is my private email address.

A full proper documents schedule is requested (as is normal) for the FOI decision

Ciao,

Julie

Dear Megan McKenna,

I note that Part 3 of the FOI received a nil return, meaning there was no legal basis for OAIC Senior Lawyer Amanda Nowland‘s s 27(A) deferment of these documents, and thus it was an abuse of process.

Ciao,

Julie