To the Department of Veterans' Affairs,

Given the public interest around the excessive legal services expenditure of the Department, under s 17 of the FOI Act I request the following one page compilation.

For every DVA employee who holds a current legal practising certificate issued by any designated regulatory authority in Australia, provide the following:

Position Number............Position Title.............Salary Band (in $)*

*Salary Band does not refer to their specific annual salary, but the current salary band their current increment sits within, as specified in your workplace agreement.

I note DVA is already undertaken to give not dissimilar information to Senate Estimates, having taken a question on notice about this, therefore charging again for the same work would be in bad faith (only difference is reporting the salary band which is minimal work).

Yours faithfully,

Verity Pane

To INFORMATION.LAW,

This FOI was sent to DVA on Tuesday 6 November 2018, and as per s 15(5)(b) became due 30 days thereafter, which was on Thursday 6 December 2018, as no extension under s 15AA or s 15AB given before expiry of s 15(5)(b) deadline, nor any s 26A, s 27 or s 27A third party consultation extension was claimed before expiry of s 15(5)(b) deadline, and no charges notice or practical refusal notification was issued before expiry of s 15(5)(b) deadline

No FOI decision was received from DVA before the expiry of the s 15(5)(b) deadline, and nor has any notice of extension to the s 15(5)(b) deadline been provided.

As such, this FOI is now deemed by s 15AC of the FOI Act to be a deemed refusal by the principal officer of the DVA.

The principal officer of the agency or minister is taken to have made a decision to refuse access to the document on the last day of the decision period. Agencies still remain obligated to continue to process an FOI request even where the statutory timeframe has expired and an extension of time has been refused or not sought. The expiry of the timeframe gives the applicant the right to apply for review of a deemed decision — it does not remove the agency's obligation to process the request.

Judging from recent history here on Right to Know, there has been multiple deemed refusals from DVA of late, this now being DVA’s preferred bad faith delaying tactic of choice currently (given the OAIC has been more wary in handing out s 15AB extensions to DVA it seems).

Given DVA hasn’t issued any decision notices to deemed refusals here on Right to Know, a failure to do so here will result in IC Review within 7 days.

Ms Pane