OFFICIAL
23 December 2025
FOI ref: 4144
Mark Pietsch
By email:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear Mr Pietsch
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST – CONSULTATION
I refer to your request, dated 10 December 2025 to the Treasury, for the following documents under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (
FOI Act):
1. Any briefs, talking points, options papers or minutes prepared by Treasury's Fiscal Group or
Macroeconomic Group between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2024 where the text of the
document contains both the words "NDIS" and "AUKUS".
2. Any emails (including attachments) sent to or from SES officers in Treasury's Fiscal Group
(including the Fiscal Policy, Social Policy and Budget Policy units) within the same period 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 and Social Policy, and SES officers reporting to the Deputy
Secretary responsible for the Macroeconomic Group or for national security/defence/AUKUS
matters.
- I am not seeking duplicate copies of the same document, purely administrative emails (e.g.
calendar invites), or drafts that differ only in trivial formatting.
I am an authorised decision maker under section 23 of the FOI Act.
I am writing to tell you that I believe that the work involved in processing your request in its current
form would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of this agency from its other operations
due to its broad scope. This is called a ‘practical refusal reason’ under section 24AA of the FOI Act.
On this basis, I intend to refuse access to the documents you have requested. However, you have an
opportunity to revise your request before I make a final decision. This is called a ‘request consultation
process’ in section 24AB of the FOI Act.
Langton Crescent
Parkes ACT 2600
Australia
P: +61 2 6263 2800
OFFICIAL
OFFICIAL
You have
14 days to respond to this notice in one of the ways set out below.
Why I intend to refuse your request
I have decided that a practical refusal reason exists because your request as currently worded is very
broad. Targeted searches of Treasury file management systems and emails returned over 5000
documents potentially in scope, not including attachments. These numbers are expected to increase as
searches are expanded to other relevant Divisions within Treasury. This is a considerable amount of
material to be retrieved and then examined in order to process your request.
At 2 minutes per document to review for relevance, I conservatively estimate it will take over 100 hours
just to locate in-scope documents. This estimate does not include time already spent processing the
request to date or the time required to process in-scope documents, undertake consultations, prepare
documents for release and prepare a statement of reasons.
For the reasons above, I am satisfied that processing your request as currently worded, would place a
significant burden on a limited number of Treasury staff and unreasonably divert resources of the
Treasury from its other operations.
Request consultation process
You have an opportunity to revise your request. This might mean narrowing the scope of the request to
make it more manageable or explaining in more detail the documents you wish to access. This will assist
the Treasury to focus on the documents that you are most interested in, saving time and resources.
Examples of possible revisions include:
• Providing a narrower date range for documents.
• Specifying a document type, such as formal briefing material to a Minister.
• Providing more specific details of the information sought. For example, specifying a particular
subject matter for the documents that mention NDIS and AUKUS.
If you revise your request in a way that adequately addresses the practical refusal grounds outlined
above, we will recommence processing it. Please note that the time taken to consult you regarding the
scope of your request is not taken into account for the purposes of the 30 day time limit for processing
your request.
What you need to do
You must contact us within 14 days from day after you receive this notice to:
• withdraw your request
• make a revised request
• tell us that you do not wish to revise your request.
OFFICIAL
OFFICIAL
You can contact us at by phone on (02) 6263 2800 or by email at
xxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xx. If we do not hear
from you within the 14 days, your request will be taken to be withdrawn.
Questions?
The Treasury FOI team is available to help you during the consultation period by phone on (02) 6263
2800 or by email to
xxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xx.
Yours sincerely
Luke Spear
A/g First Assistant Secretary
Fiscal Group
OFFICIAL
