c) draft versions of a document where a later version exists;
d) publicly available documents;
e) personal information (including names and contact details) of APS staff at a non-SES
level by redaction (although job titles are to remain);
f) telephone numbers of SES officers.
I also agree to:
g) administrative release of the requested information if this would assist the Department
in processing the request;
h) referral of this request (in whole or in part) to another Commonwealth agency if
required.
I note that a similar request has been previously made
(https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/documents_related_to_revocation) in relation to
another individual.
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 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.
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Reasons for practical refusal
The Department has identified 106 documents potentially captured by the scope of your
request. It has taken the Department a total of 7 hours to search for, identify, and retrieve the
packages from the electronic system.
Of these 106 documents, several contain attachments which contain a high volume of
documents that may be relevant to your request. As there is a large number of relevant
documents identified as falling in scope of your request it will take a significant amount of time
to sort and arrive at a final range of content that will meet the scope of your request. It would
take a significant number of hours to identify and retrieve documents potentially in scope of your
request.
The Department’s assessment of a sample of the documents has also revealed that the
documents in scope contain information concerning numerous stakeholders, including various
business areas within the Department. As such, the Department must not decide to give access
to those documents unless the affected Business Areas have been provided with a reasonable
opportunity to make exemption submissions. I conservatively estimate that this
consultation
process would take approximately
8 hours. This includes managing any queries raised by the
third parties in relation to the consultation.
The Department has completed a sample assessment of their contents to determine the
estimated resources required in order to process your request. The assessment was completed
using a
10 percent sample size, totalling
11 documents.
The Department has assessed that the
11 documents consisted of
114 pages. This
provides an average page count of
11.4 pages per document.
The Department would require an additional
2 hours to prepare a schedule of documents and
prepare the documents for assessment. This would include extraction and collation of any
embedded attachments as well as file format conversions.
If the Department were to commence assessments, an FOI officer would require an estimated
5 minutes per page to perform preliminary assessments for exempt material.
Based on the
106 documents identified as potentially within scope of you request,
averaging
11.4 pages in length, it is estimated
100.2 hours would be required to complete
preliminary assessment for exempt material (calculations below).
Assessment time: 106 documents x 11.4 pages x 5 mins per page = 6,042 mins or 100.7
hours
I am therefore 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.
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You now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable it to proceed. You may wish to
revise your request as follows:
• You may wish to focus on specific documents such as Ministerial Submissions held by
the Department related to the decision to revoke the visa held by Matthew Gruter
Under section 24AB(6) of the FOI Act, you have 14 days 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), 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.
Contact
Should you wish to revise your request or have any questions in relation to this process, please
do not hesitate to contact Mary at xxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx.
Yours Sincerely
Mary
FOI Case Officer | Legal Group
Privacy, FOI & Records Management Branch
Freedom of Information | Legal Group
Department of Home Affairs
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