23 September 2025

Ben Fairless
By email only: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx

RE: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST 2026-00183

Dear Mr Fairless,

The purpose of this letter is to give you a formal decision about access to documents that you requested
under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) (“FOI Act”).

I am an officer authorised under section 23(1) of the FOI Act to make decisions in relation to FOI requests.

Your request was received by Australia Post on 21 August 2025. You are seeking documents comprising:
the number of complaints in the previous 12 months about missed deliveries. I would like the number
broken down as follows
- complaints per state
- complaints per month
- complaints based on if the delivery person was an employee or contractor.
I specifically excluding  as irrelevant any personal information of members of the public and employees and
contractors of Australia Post.

(“Request”).

It is my view that documents matching the description of your Request should do not exist or as standard
mail articles are not tracked and as such do not exist. To extent the Request is read as a reference to
complaints regarding tracked items, these relate to commercial activity and are refused under the FOI Act.

My formal decision and information about that decision are set out below.

Decision and reasons for decision

Having taken all reasonable steps to find documents within scope including making inquiries of relevant
information holders, no documents within the scope of the Request which are not refused pursuant to
section 7(2) can be found.

Your Request is formally refused under sections 7(2) – commercial activities of the FOI Act.

The following material was considered in making my decision:
•  the terms of your Request,
•  searches and inquiries made of relevant information holders,
•  the FOI Act, and
•  the FOI guidelines issued by the Australian Information Commissioner (“Guidelines”).

Insofar as your Request relates to records of customer interactions including the collection of information
from or pertaining to customer interactions this comprises infrastructure maintained for commercial trading
Freedom of
   Information
Contact:
480 Swan Street
E xxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Richmond Victoria 3121

purpose  and facilitating commercial activities (those being interactions with commercial customers of
Australia Post) and accordingly, are refused on the ground that these constitute commercial materials
(section 7(2)).

Insofar as your Request relates to content of policies, guidelines and direction to Australia Post personnel and
other  information  which  pertain to Australia Post’s commercial  operations and are not disclosed outside
Australia Post, the documents identified are exempt on the basis these comprise trade secrets  and
commercially valuable for the purposes of section 47 (1).

Insofar as your Request relates to copies of legislation and published regulatory guidelines, these comprise
materials maintained for reference purposes that are otherwise publicly available and not documents for the
purposes of an FOI request pursuant to section 12 of the FOI Act.

Section 7(2)

Section 7(2) in conjunction with Schedule 2, Part I , of the FOI Act entirely exempts Australia Post from the
operation of the FOI Act in respect of documents relating to its commercial activities (CF paragraph 2.14, Part
2 and the relevant definition of commercial activities in part II of Schedule 2 of the FOI Act).

I also note that section  pursuant to 7(4)  the  documents  comprise  ‘documents received or bought into
existence in the course of, for the purposes of, the carrying on of those activities’ in particular facilitating
communication for the purposes of Australia Post’s commercial activities.

The documents matching the aspects of your request comprise data pertaining to complaints made in respect
of customers with whom Australia Post has a commercial relationship i.e. items where there are tracking for
which missed delivery complaint may have arisen. Complaints around missed deliveries pertains to tracked
items and as such are not related to the carriage of postal  articles and is instead  activity  comprising
commercial profit seeking activities.

Section 17

For completeness in the Request you requested creation of a document pursuant to section 17 for the
reasons noted above, this section is not relevant to the reasons for refusal of the request in that where the
documents do not exist, this is the result of data being unavailable as opposed for capable of being
prepared from the use of computer or other equipment pursuant to 17(1)(c). Insofar as the Request is refused
on the basis of section 7(2) section 17 is not relevant or validly asserted.

Conclusion

It follows that I believe that disclosure of the documents you seek is not required under then FOI Act.

Your review rights are set out in Attachment A to this letter.

Yours sincerely

Jeremy Tan
Corporate Lawyer
Freedom of
   Information
Contact:
480 Swan Street
E xxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Richmond Victoria 3121

ATTACHMENT A
FOI Review Rights
Your review rights
If you are dissatisfied with my decision, under section 54L of the FOI Act, you may apply to the Australian
Information Commissioner to review my decision. An application for review by the Information Commissioner
must be made in writing within 60 days of the date of this letter, and be lodged in one of the following ways:
online: https://webform.oaic.gov.au/prod?entitytype=ICReview&layoutcode=ICReviewWF
email: xxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx
post: GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001
More information about an Information Commissioner review is available on the Office of the
Australian Information Commissioner website. Go to https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-
information/your-freedom-of-information-rights/freedom-of-information-reviews/information-
commissioner-review

Freedom of
Information
Contact:
480 Swan Street
E xxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Richmond Victoria 3121

Document Outline