FOI 913/25/26
Mark Pietsch
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear Mark,
NOTIFICATION OF A REQUEST CONSULTATION PROCESS – FOI 913/25/26
I refer to your request for access to the following documents, in the possession of the Department of
Defence (Defence) 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.
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’ (section 24AA).
On this basis, I intend to refuse your request. However, before I make a final decision to do this, you
have an opportunity to revise your request. This is called a ‘request consultation process’ as set out
under section 24AB of the FOI Act. You have 14 days to respond to this notice in one of the ways set
out below.
Reason for Intending to Refuse Your Request
In your request of 10 December 2025, you sought:
1. Any briefs, submissions, talking points, issues notes or options papers prepared by the
Department of Defence 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 the
Department’s Strategic Policy and Intelligence Group, Capability Acquisition and Sustainment
Group, Defence People Group or any equivalent division 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”.
I am not seeking duplicate copies of the same document, routine administrative emails (for
example, diary requests or purely logistical correspondence), or drafts that differ only in trivial
formatting.
For the purpose of providing this notice, I have considered whether processing your request would
be unreasonable. I consider that processing your request, as it currently stands, would be
unreasonable because the work involved in processing your request in its current form would
substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations.
2
Section 24(1) of the FOI Act provides that an agency may refuse to give access to documents in
accordance with an FOI request if:
a practical refusal reason exists in relation to the request; and
following a request consultation process under section 24AB of the FOI Act, the agency is
satisfied that the practical refusal reason still exists.
Section 24AA(1)(a)(i) of the FOI Act provides that a practical refusal reason exists in relation to an FOI
request if the work involved in processing the request would substantially and unreasonably divert
the resources of the department from its other operations.
Your request seeks access to 'any' briefs, submissions, talking points, issues notes, options papers
and/or emails that contain the words "NDIS” and "AUKUS" for a period of 3 years. Please be advised
that a request for any and/or all documents concerning a particular subject will likely attract refusal
under section 24AA of the FOI Act because, with few exceptions, it would simply not be possible for
the decision maker to certify that he or she has identified every copy of every document in the
Department's possession. To do so would require a search of every hard copy file and the electronic
communication and records management systems used by Defence. It is considered that the
workload involved in conscientiously attempting to do so would involve a substantial and
unreasonable diversion of the resources of the agency. Further, as you have not specified a particular
topic or area within Defence who would potentially hold the documents you are seeking, your
request would require all Defence Groups to undertake searches of their records.
Preliminary considerations of Part 2 of your request note that you have sought access to ‘any emails’
that were sent or received within a 3 year period by Defence SES Band 1 and Band 2 officers. In
accordance with the data contained within Defence's 2024-2025 Annual Report, as at 30 June 2025
there were 168 SES Band 1 and 2 level officers within the Department. Therefore, in order to locate
all documents relevant to the scope of your request, searches of the email inboxes of 168 senior
Defence personnel would be required to be undertaken. Using a conservative estimate of 1 hour to
search each inbox, it would take 168 hours to conduct the search and retrieval phase of the process
alone.
The above estimate reflects preliminary searches to be undertaken to locate in scope documents for
Part 2 of your request only, does not reflect the time required to conduct additional searches of
information holdings for all relevant teams, does not include time to consult with any persons in
relation to the request, and does not include the time required to grant, refuse or defer access or
redact any exempt material from the documents, making copies etc. As such, I regard the actual time
required to fulfil this request to be considerably higher than the estimate above and am satisfied that
your request as it is currently framed, constitutes valid practical refusal grounds.
Request Consultation Process
You now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable Defence to process it.
Revising your request can mean narrowing the scope of the request to make it more manageable or
explaining in more detail the documents you wish to access. For example, by providing more specific
information about exactly what documents you are interested in, Defence will be able to pinpoint
the documents more quickly and avoid using excessive resources to process documents you are not
interested in.
Before the end of the consultation period, you must do one of the following, in writing:
Withdraw your request
Make a revised request
