FOI Team Leader
FOI Team
Legal and Investigations Group
C12MT1
GPO Box 9880
CANBERRA ACT 2601

Dear FOI Team Leader,

This is a request under the FOI Act for documents. I request documents (details below) in regards to international travel (no matter if undertaken or merely booked) by/for employees in the Senior Executive Service in Higher Education Division/Group area since the Opposition Leader Mr Tony Abbott announced he would create a Commission of Audit if his party was elected.

I request only documents created in the period September 4th, 2013 to today. I request only parts of documents that identify the:
(i) name of the Senior Executive Service traveller
(ii) rank/position of the traveller
(iii) total cost of the travel
(iv) date the booking was made (if the travel has not yet taken place)
(v) purpose of the travel
(vi) destination(s) and dates of travel.

All else may be redacted. If a document repeats information from another document, only one document is requested. I have seen that in the case of similar requests made to Department of Finance in regards to parliamentary expenses, said department has frequently reduced costs by preferring to answer the request with a summary table in place of the original documents.

Thank you.

P. Gale (Mrs)
May 26th, 2014.

Ms Kirsten Burns
Senior Government Lawyer
Department of Education

Dear Ms Burns,

Thank you for your informative decision letter (unreferenced) in regards to my FOI request of May 26th, 2014.

I accept the decision but I would appreciate your clarification of a statement about an important date. In paragraph 6 you refer to "5 December 2014" as if it were a date in the past, prior to May 26th, 2014. I assume that the error is only in the year and that you were meaning 2013 (ie, December 5th, 2013). Is that correct, or were you meaning some other date altogether?

Thank you again.

P. Gale (Mrs)
June 10th, 2014.