Dear Prime Minister,

On Thursday, you met virtually with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, e.g. see https://www.sbs.com.au/news/scott-morris... thus giving the Australian Government another chance to resolve the frozen UK State Pension issue. As we all know from much previous correspondence, most recently, in my case, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Dan Tehan's 17 September 2021 letter to Senator Andrew Bragg, the Australian Government repeatedly assures us that it

"will continue to press the issue with our UK counterparts on behalf of UK pensioners in Australia"

so I feel confident that you will have made another attempt to resolve the issue on this occasion, even though the attempt appears to have been excluded from the joint statement available at https://www.pm.gov.au/media/joint-statem...

1. Could you please provide me with any documents that you or your office hold that shows that the you attempted to resolve the frozen UK State Pension issue with the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff during the virtual meeting.

2. If you DID NOT attempt to resolve the frozen UK State Pension issue with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff during the virtual meeting, could you please provide me with any documents that you or your office hold that shows why the Australian Government did not attempt to resolve this issue on this occasion.

3. If the Australian Government was once again ineffective in its attempt to resolve the frozen UK State Pension issue during this visit, could you please provide me with any documents that contain analyses that you or your office have done investigating the reason for the failure, and attempting to develop a more effective strategy for future attempts.

4. If you or your office do not hold any documents that are covered by point 3, could you please provide me with any documents that you or your office hold that shows why you and your office do not attempt to improve your performance in resolving the frozen UK State Pension issue by analysing your past performance.

Yours faithfully,

Paul Swain

Dear FOI team,

I refer to PMO FOI reference number FOI/PMO/2022/007. I believe that your response to this request is overdue.

I am sure that this is just an oversight. After all, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, told us just the other day,

"I'm regularly up in front of you and I deal with the hard questions that are put to me and all the many issues we have had to deal with over many, many years” (see https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/prime... )

and that therefore you are not avoiding responding.

Could you please respond to my request immediately.

If you would like to me to agree to an extension of time, could you please

- explain, in detail, why this is necessary;
- explain why you didn't request the extension within the original 30 day response period; and
- advise the implications of granting an extension if a Federal election is called before you have responded.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Swain

Dear John,

I refer to your 7 March 2022 letter regarding my 18 February 2022 FoI request (your reference FOI/PMO/2022/007) advising that you believe that it is unreasonably difficult to identify the documents that I am seeking, and that therefore you can refuse my request.

I dispute your claim that my request "imports cascading propositions or assertions", and therefore I believe that your assessment is incorrect. I believe that there are very simple pathways through my request, and in any case, part 1 of my request is extremely straightforward.

As evidence that it is possible to provide the documents I have requested, DFAT are having no problems with a very similar request as you can see at https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/r..., apart from needing a few extra days to provide of the documents I requested.

Therefore, since you represent the Prime Minister who "deal[s] with the hard questions" (see https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/r...), I believe that it is fully within your capabilities to provide the information that I have requested.

Could you please review your decision and stop ducking the question. People ducking questions is something that the Prime Minister says is unacceptable as you can see at https://twitter.com/SquizzSTK/status/151....

I note that you have now had 48 days to respond to my request. Therefore I believe that your comment "Please note that the time taken to consult with you regarding the scope of your FOI request is not taken into account for the purpose of calculating the 30 day processing period" is redundant. I further suggest that any claim that I should pay a charge under Section 29 of the FoI Act is unreasonable given that you have not made a claim that I pay a charge for the past 48 days.

DFAT intend to respond to my request on 13 April 2022. I therefore believe that that is a reasonable date for the Prime Minister to respond and I look forward to receiving your response on that date.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Swain

Dear Prime Minister,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of the Prime Minister's handling of my FOI request 'Resolution of frozen UK State Pensions issue', PMO FOI reference number FOI/PMO/2022/007, which is available at https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/r...

Senior Adviser John Harris has refused my request and has failed to enter into any discussion of this (see https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/r...), and so it appears that the only way to make any progress is with an internal review.

John Harris' reason for refusing my request is because he believes that it is unreasonably difficult to identify the documents that I am seeking. I dispute John Harris' belief. I believe that I have clearly identified the documents that I want, and that there are very simple pathways through my request and that therefore John Harris' refusal is not correct.

As evidence that it is possible to provide the documents I have requested, DFAT have had no problems with a very similar request as you can see at https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/r..., apart from needing a few extra days to provide of the documents I requested. In fact, DFAT were even able to respond to my request a few days earlier than they expected!

Further, since you claim to be the Prime Minister who "deal[s] with the hard questions" (see https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/prime...), I believe that it is inappropriate to claim that it is too difficult to understand what documents I am requesting, especially given that DFAT have shown that it can be done. I therefore believe that it is fully within your capabilities to provide the information that I have requested and that John Harris' refusal is incorrect.

You are also on record as saying that ducking questions is unacceptable - see https://twitter.com/SquizzSTK/status/151... - so again, it seems surprising that even if there is some difficultly in understanding the documents that I want, a difficulty that wasn't apparent to DFAT, that you wouldn't make the effort necessary to find it.

I would also like an explanation of why you missed the 30 day response period, especially given your practice of answering the hard questions and not ducking questions. Why didn't your practice apply to my request?

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/r...

Given the unexplained delay in responding to my request, I believe that it would be inappropriate for you to take the normal 30 days from the receipt of this request to carry out the internal review. If you had met the 30 day response period for my original request, then your response to a request for an internal review would have likely been due on 21 April 2022.

This is likely too short a period even for someone such as you, but I suggest that it would be appropriate for you to reply by 28 April 2022. Please let me know immediately, with reasons, if you don't believe that this will be possible.

Yours faithfully,

Paul Swain