OFFICIAL
Freedom of Information (FOI) request
Practical Refusal Consultation Notice
Reference: FOI/2025/345
Mark Pietsch
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear Mr Pietsch
I refer to your request to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (the Department), under
the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act), received on 10 December 2025.
You set out your request in the following terms:
1. Any briefs, submissions, talking points, issues notes or options papers prepared by the
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2024
where the text of the document contains both of the words “NDIS” and “AUKUS”.
2. Any emails (including attachments) sent to or from SES Band 1 and Band 2 officers in PM&C’s
Fiscal, Social Policy, National Security or Cabinet Divisions between 1 January 2022 and 31
December 2024 where the body of the email or any attachment contains both of the words
“NDIS” and “AUKUS”.
For the purposes of this request:
- I am happy for you to limit your search in item 2 to:
- SES officers reporting to the Deputy Secretary responsible for Fiscal / Social Policy, and
- SES officers reporting to the Deputy Secretary responsible for National Security / AUKUS.
On 24 December 2025 and 12 January 2026, the Department wrote to you to seek clarification on the
terms of your request. A response has not been received.
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Notice of practical refusal reason
Section 24(1) of the FOI Act provides that a request to an agency may be refused if the decision maker
is satisfied that a practical refusal reason exists in relation to that request.
I write to advise you that subject to possible further revision and clarification which would narrow the
request, the Department considers that the work involved in processing the request in its current form
would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the Department from its other
operations.
This constitutes a ‘practical refusal reason’ under section 24AA of the FOI Act. On this basis, the
decision maker for the request intends to refuse access to the documents you have requested.
However, before a final decision to refuse the request can be made, you have an opportunity to revise
your request. This is called a ‘request consultation process’ as set out in section 24AB of the FOI Act.
You have 14 days to respond to this notice, as set out below. The 14 days commences the day after
you receive this letter.
Reasons for intention to refuse your request
In deciding if a practical refusal reason exists, an agency must have regard to the resources required
to perform the following activities specified in section 24AA(2) of the FOI Act:
• identifying, locating or collating documents within the filing system of the agency;
• examining the documents;
• deciding whether to grant, refuse or defer access;
• consulting with other parties;
• redacting exempt material from the documents;
• making copies of documents;
• notifying an interim or final decision to the applicant.
The construction of your request is broad because you are seeking a broad range of documents that
include the terms ‘AUKUS’ and ‘NDIS’ from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2024 (across 3 years). As a
result the construction of the request without further context means that if a document is located and
it contains both of your terms it must be in scope, although the type of records that would contain
both these terms would be those that consolidate a large number of policy and programs in which
the department, as a central agency, has consolidated to manage cross agency consultation.
The request also has the effect of capturing corporate records of the department, including the
preparation of those records, for example our Annual Reports. These can be access at
Department of
the Prime Minister and Cabinet Annual Report 2024-25 | PM&C
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For this reason, the processing of your request requires searches across multiple line areas in the
department, systems and record repositories, including archived records. Having made inquiries and
run system key word searches we find that the task to search, identify, and retrieve documents is
unreasonable.
These searches have returned over 28,000 items containing the words ‘AUKUS’ and ‘NDIS’. The results
include a wide range of records such as internal working documents, duplicates and drafts. Following
a sampling of the records, it has been determined that the terms ‘AUKUS’ and ‘NDIS’ are mentioned
in documents in unrelated contexts, given they are general priorities for the Department. It is unclear
if these records would be of interest to you. This is demonstrated in records that are published on our
website i.e. Annual Reports, PM&C Organisation Chart and Corporate Plans.
To process your request a decision maker would be required to assess each of the documents to
determine if they respond to your request and then make a decision on access. This would include
reviewing each document to identify if they were:
• the category of a ‘briefs, submissions, talking points, issues notes or options papers’
• identify if emails were sent to or from SES Band 1 and Band 2 officers in the Fiscal, Social
Policy, National Security and Cabinet Division, given the staff turnover support form HR would
be required to identify the names of the officers who held those positions across the 3 years,
and there could be difficulty in identifying those that may have acted from time to time.
As a conservative estimate of 3 mins per document to retrieve, review for relevance, and then prepare
in a form for assessment under the FOI Act we find it would take a single officer 37 working weeks or
over 9 months to complete.
Documents found to meet your request terms will then need to be assessed in accordance with the
FOI Act. This would include the consideration and identification of any sensitivities in the documents,
consulting third parties, preparing a schedule of documents, and preparing a decision on access.
Given the broad nature of your request and that it will capture records containing cross policy and
program material, multiple areas in the Department and external agencies would need to be
consulted on any documents found to be responsive to your request.
Other matters may be relevant in deciding if a practical refusal reason exists such as the staffing
resources available to an agency for FOI processing, whether the processing can only be undertaken
by one or more specialist officers in an agency who have competing responsibilities, the impact that
processing may have on other work in an agency including FOI processing, and whether there is a
significant public interest in the documents requested.
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For the reasons given above, the decision maker considers that processing your request in its current
form would create a substantial and unreasonable diversion of the Department’s resources from its
other operations.
Request consultation process
You now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable it to proceed. Revising your request
can mean narrowing the scope of the request to make it more manageable or explaining in more
detail the specific documents you wish to access.
For example, you may wish to consider revising your request in one or more of the following ways:
• providing a specific and reduced timeframe;
• reducing the parts of your request;
• you could provide further context surrounding the category of documents, for example are you
seeking briefs that the department prepared for the Prime Minister;
• provide further information or background regarding what material you are seeking, for
example what is the connection you are looking for between the words AUKUS and NDIS;
• provide additional key words for us to include in our searches i.e. “AUKUS” AND “NDIS” AND…
• clarify the responsible area of the Department, rather than the position, which you believe may
hold relevant records and confirm your agreement to confine searches to those areas, you can
view the Department’s structure at:
https://www.pmc.gov.au/who-we-are/the-department
• exclude corporate items such as those that we have published on the website.
Action required
Section 24AB of the FOI Act provides that before the end of the consultation period you must do one
of the following, in writing, within the next 14 days (by 20 February 2026):
a. Withdraw the request;
b. Make a revised request;
c. Indicated that you do not wish to revise the request.
The consultation period runs for 14 days and starts on the day after you receive this notice. During this
time, you may wish to seek assistance to revise your request from the contact person listed below.
If you do not do one of the above during the consultation period, your request will be taken to have
been withdrawn
1.
1 section 24AB(7) of the FOI Act
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No guarantee of access
Please be aware that while revising your FOI request may enable it to be processed, this is not pre-
emptive of an access grant decision. That is a matter for the decision maker to decide in the usual
manner after examining the relevant documents.
The issue we are addressing now is whether your FOI request can be processed – not what the
eventual outcome may be if it is processed.
Calculating of the 30 day processing period
Please note that the time taken to consult with you regarding the scope of your FOI request, under
this request consultation notice, is not accounted for when calculating the 30 day period
2.
Contact officer
Should you wish to discuss any aspect of your request, please contact the FOI team at the
Department by email a
t xxx@xxx.xxx.xx or by phone 02 6271 5849, quoting reference number
FOI/2025/345.
Yours sincerely
Janelle Dedakis
Senior Adviser
FOI Section | Government Division
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
6 February 2026
2 section 24AB(8) of the FOI Act
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