Watson Norwood
Office of General Counsel
By email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
GPO Box 367
CANBERRA CITY ACT 2601
www.airservicesaustralia.com
Dear Mr Norwood
ABN 59 698 720 886
FOI 23-10 - Decision on Access
I refer to the request made under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) (
FOI Act) to
Airservices Australia (
Airservices) on 6 May 2023 (
the request). It seeks access to:
a complete copy of the departments' Freedom of Information (FOI) logs for the period 2013-2023,
including any secondary departments controlled by the agency
I am authorised under section 23 of the FOI Act and the Airservices Instrument of Delegation and
Authorisation to make decisions on primary requests under the FOI Act.
Section 24A Decision – Documents do not exist
Section 24A of the FOI Act provides in part that an agency may refuse a request for access to a
document if all reasonable steps have been taken to find the document and the agency is satisfied
that it does not exist.
The FOI request appears to seek a complete record of every FOI request received by Airservices
over the the last 10 years. Airservices does not have a centralised record that contains this
information and it would take a significant amount of resources to create such a document. I have
therefore decided to refuse access to this document under section 24A of the FOI Act.
I note that the request has been driven by the applicant’s suspicion that our FOI Disclosure Log is
incomplete in that it does not hold a record of every request received. I can advise that to the best of
my knowledge our FOI Disclosure Log is complete, but that it does not hold record of every request
received during the 2013-2023 period. This discrepancy is due to Airservices not being required to
publish information in accessed documents upon its disclosure log where that publication would be
unreasonable (for example, publication of sensitive personal or business information).
If the applicant would like further detail on the exact numbers of requests received by Airservices
and those published on our disclosure log, this information is publicly available as part of our
statistical reporting to the OAIC and published on data.gov.au.
Review rights and complaints
Information about your rights of review and how you can make a complaint about the handling of
your request is at
Attachment A.
Contact
If you wish to discuss my decision please contact me at
xxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.
Yours sincerely
Alan Hilvert-Bruce
Authorised FOI Decision Maker
ATTACHMENT A
INFORMATION ON REVIEW RIGHTS
The
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (
the FOI Act) gives you the right to apply for a review of this
decision via:
(a)
an internal review; or
(b)
the Australian Information Commissioner (
Information Commissioner).
Internal review
If you apply for internal review, it wil be carried out by a different decision-maker who will make a
fresh decision on your application. An application for review must be:
(a)
made in writing;
(b)
made within 30 days of receiving this letter; and
(c)
sent to xxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.
No particular form is required, but it is desirable to set out in the application the grounds upon which
you consider the decision should be reviewed.
If the internal review results in you not being provided access to all of the documents to which you
have requested access, you have the right to seek a review of that decision by the Information
Commissioner.
Information Commissioner review
You can opt to instead seek external review by the Information Commissioner. To seek review you
must apply to the Information Commissioner within 60 days of the receipt of this decision letter.
Further details on this process can be found on their website at
ht ps://www.oaic.gov.au/.
You wil also have the opportunity to seek Information Commissioner review of an Internal Review if
you are dissatisfied with its outcome.
Complaints to the Information Commissioner
Information Commissioner
You may also complain to the Information Commissioner concerning action taken by an agency in
the exercise of powers or the performance of functions under the FOI Act. There is no fee for
making a complaint. A complaint to the Information Commissioner must be made in writing. Further
details on this process can be found on their website at
https:/ www.oaic.gov.au/.
Document Outline
