UNCLASSIFIED
 
Our references: FA 13/09/01130; ADF2013/31298
 
Ainsley De Silva
Via email: [FOI #423 email]
 
Dear Ainsley De Silva
 
Thank you for your request for access to information, received on Tuesday
24 September 2013, for:
 
“…the residency status (such as student visa, graduate visa etc). of
foreigners who arrive as students but presently resident in Australia and
continue to work about 64 hours per fortnight. The name, Date of birth,
telephone no, passport number, residing address are known”
 
This email is to advise that the Department has not accepted your request
as a valid request under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act). 
This is because your request is for 'information' and not for a document
in the Department's possession at the time of your request.  I will
outline more fully the reasons for this below.
 
Access to Documents
 
The right to request documents under the FOI Act is outlined in the
Guidelines published by the Office of the Australian Information
Commissioner (OAIC):
 
Section 11(1) of the FOI Act gives every person a legally enforceable
right to obtain access to a document of an agency or an official document
of a minister, unless the document is exempt. [para 2.1]
 
The right of access enshrined in the FOI Act applies to ‘documents’. This
term is defined in s 4(1) to include maps, photographs, and any article
from which sounds, images or writing are capable of being reproduced (for
example, emails). There is no general obligation on agencies to reduce
information to written documentary form in order to facilitate an FOI
request, except in relation to information that is stored on a computer
tape or disk (s 17). [para 1.26]
 
The right of access is to existing documents, rather than to information.
The FOI Act does not require an agency or minister to create a new
document in response to a request for access, except in limited
circumstances where the applicant seeks access in a different format (see
Part 8 of these Guidelines) or where the information is stored in an
agency computer system rather than in discrete form.
 
The right of access applies to documents that exist at the time the FOI
request was made. [para 3.8]
 
Therefore, any general request for 'information' or 'data' that does not
already exist in the Department’s documents is considered an invalid
request. As a result, your request has been closed as invalid.
 
The full Guidelines can be accessed on the OAIC's website at:
[1]http://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-inform...
 
Access to published statistics
 
You may not be aware that the Department publishes a number of migration
related statistical and research reports. These can be found at
[2]http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publication... .
 
Yours sincerely
 
Angela O'Neil
Manager FOI Help Desk
FOI & Privacy Policy Section
Department of Immigration and Border Protection
Email: [email address]
 

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