Dear Minister for Human Services,

If possible, please treat this as an informal or administrative request. Otherwise, please treat this as a formal request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

I request the following documents:

1. Diary extracts listing the date, time, and duration of any and all meetings held with the Department of Human Services between 1 Jan 2016 and 31 Dec 2016, inclusive.
2. Meeting agendas for any and all meetings held with the Department for Human Services between 1 Jan 2016 and 31 Dec 2016, inclusive.
3. Minutes, and other notes for any and all meetings held with the Department for Human Services between 1 Jan 2016 and 31 Dec 2016, inclusive.

Yours faithfully,

Justin Warren

Dear Mr Asten,

Thank you for your letter.

I am happy to limit the scope of my request to formal meetings only.

The items listed in my request are aimed at defining the documents for the same set of meetings, rather than each item referring to a different set of meetings.

By referring to "diary extracts" I am referring to a printout of calendar data similar to Calendar Details Style in Outlook 2013 (https://support.office.com/en-us/article...)

By 'minutes' I mean the subsequent documentation that formally records the proceedings, discussions, outcomes, etc. of the meeting. Minutes is a commonly used term, but may also include other attachments or notes that form part of the formal record of the meeting. I expect that, in general, formal minutes would be produced. The formal record will be sufficient to fulfil the scope of my request.

I note, however, that handwritten notes by staff were used by Attorney-General Brandis as part of the formal record of his discussions with the then Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson in his submission to a Senate Inquiry (http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Busi...). If such notes exist and capture important information not included in the formal minutes, then those notes would fall within the scope of this request. Such a situation would be highly unusual for an office with good record keeping and efficient meeting procedures and I do not expect your office is such a place.

I am confident that this kind of formal meeting documentation would be rigorously tracked and should not represent a significant search and retrieval burden. I am happy to work with you to further refine the scope should these formal records prove to be unreasonably voluminous for review and redaction purposes.

Yours faithfully,

Justin Warren