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28 October 2025
Oliver Smith
BY EMAIL: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
In reply please quote:
FOI Request:
FA 25/09/00768
File Number:
FA25/09/00768
Dear Oliver Smith
I refer to your email dated 8 September 2025, in which you requested access to documents held by the
Department of Home Affairs (the Department) under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act).
You have requested access to the following:
I seek access to documents held by the Department of Home Affairs that supplement, update, or go
beyond the publicly available processing instructions on LEGENDcom, specifically:
Current internal documents (including but not limited to risk profiles, country information notes,
operational risk assessments, risk indicators, or supplementary decision-maker guidance) which
address:
1. Identified risks or concerns associated with Vietnamese passport holders applying for:
- Visitor visa (subclass 600)
- Transit visa (subclass 771)
- Student visa (subclass 500)
- Any mitigating factors or considerations staff are instructed to apply in relation to those risks.
2. Internal correspondence, memoranda, or briefing notes (including emails and attachments) created
within the last 12 months between:
- Onshore Department of Home Affairs staff, and
- Staff at the Australian Embassy in Hanoi or the Australian Consulate-General in Ho Chi Minh City,
- where the subject matter concerns refusal trends, risk management, or assessment practices for
Vietnamese applicants for the above visa subclasses.
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3. Any current country risk assessments or intelligence summaries relating specifically to Vietnamese
nationals as they pertain to visa decision-making, where these are not publicly available on
LEGENDcom or your website.
For clarity, I do not seek access to:
- Material already published on LEGENDcom;
- Personal information about individual applicants;
- Drafts or duplicates of already-released public material.
I request that the documents be provided in electronic form. If parts of the documents are considered
exempt, I request access to edited copies with exempt material deleted pursuant to section 22 of the
FOI Act.
Intention to refuse request
I am writing to advise you that I intend to refuse your request on the basis that a practical refusal reason
exists. However, before I make a final decision to do this, you have an opportunity to revise your request to
remove the practical refusal reason. This is called a ‘
request consultation process’. You have 14 days (due
11 November 2025) to respond to this notice in one of the ways set out below.
Power to refuse request
Section 24 of the FOI Act provides that if the Department is satisfied that a practical refusal reason exists in
relation to a request, the Department must undertake a consultation process with you, and if, after that
consultation process, the Department remains satisfied that the practical refusal reason still exists, the
Department may refuse to give you access to the documents subject to the request.
Practical refusal
A
practical refusal reason exists under section 24AA of the FOI Act if either (or both) of the following applies:
(1)(a)(i) the work involved in the processing of the request would substantially and unreasonably divert
the resources of the Department from its other operations
(1)(b) the request does not satisfy the requirement in section 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act, which requires
you to provide such information concerning the document you are seeking access to, to enable
the Department to be able to identify it.
I consider that the work involved in the processing of the request would substantially and unreasonably divert
the resources of the Department from its other operations, and accordingly that practical refusal reasons exist
under section 24AA(1)(a)(i) of the FOI Act.
Reasons for practical refusal
The Department has made a preliminary assessment of the documents that would be captured by your
request.
The Department has identified in excess of 15,000 documents that may be captured by your request. This
assessment results from a search of the Department’s electronic systems, including emails and other
documents.
Whilst the Department has identified that it holds 15,000 potentially relevant documents in its electronic
systems, it would take the Department an average of 3 minutes per document to actually search for and
retrieve each of those relevant documents. As such, I estimate that it would take the Department an estimated
750 hours at least to search for, identify and retrieve the more than 15,000 potentially relevant documents
from its electronic systems.
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In the event that all these documents would actually be relevant to your request, based on an average of 3
minute per document, a further
750 hours would be required to collate and create a schedule of the more
than 15,000 potentially relevant documents. This would include the retrieval of any emails which incorporate
attachments and the collation of those attachments.
In the event that the Department was to continue to process your request, a decision would need to be made
on access to those documents. Based on an estimate that each document is at least two pages in length,
and that the decision maker would require at least seven minutes to review and assess each page for relevant
exemptions, I estimate that it would take at least
3,500 hours to complete a decision on access to the
documents potentially identified as being relevant to your request.
As such, a minimum total estimated time of
5,000 hours would be required to process this request.
I note that in
VMQD and Commissioner of Taxation [2018] AATA 4619 (17 December 2018) Commissioner,
SM Puplick commented that:
What constitutes valid practical refusal grounds is thus agency specific and resource dependent. Nevertheless for
any agency, a burden in excess of 200 hours would almost certainly make the threshold of a rational and objective
test.
I am satisfied that the Department would be required to divert significant resources from its current operations
in order to identify, locate and collate the documents held within the Department, and to make a decision on
access to those documents. This diversion would result in a significant drain on the resources of the area
within the Department that would be required to process this request.
I consider that this would result in this request imposing both a substantial and an unreasonable diversion of
resources of the Department from its other operations and that a practical refusal reason exists in relation to
this request.
You now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable it to proceed.
•
Instead of
“Internal correspondence, memoranda, or briefing notes (including emails and
attachments)” limit the request to one type of document, e.g. ‘briefs’, ‘Minutes’ or ‘advice’;
and
•
Reduce the date range to a maximum of a two week period;
and
•
Focus on one visa subclass.
Under section 24AB(6) of the FOI Act, you have 14 days (due 11 November 2025) to do one of the following:
•
withdraw your request;
•
make a revised request;
•
indicate that you do not wish to revise your request.
If you do not do one of the three things listed above during the consultation period (14 days, due 11 November
2025), or you do not consult the contact person listed below during this period, your request will be taken to
have been withdrawn in accordance with section 24AB(7) of the FOI Act.
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Contact
Should you wish to revise your request or have any questions in relation to this process, please do not hesitate
to contact Tony a
t xxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx. Yours sincerely
Tony
Authorised FOI Officer | Freedom of Information Section
Privacy, FOI and Records Management Branch | Legal Group
Department of Home Affairs
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