OFFICIAL
Defence FOI 985/25/26
JS
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear JS
NOTIFICATION OF A REQUEST CONSULTATION PROCESS – FOI 985/25/26
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 size and complexity. 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, you sought documents relating to:
Document requested
I seek access to the current head contract between the Department of Defence and Toll
Transitions Pty Ltd for the provision of Defence member relocation and removal services, as in
force on 1 September 2025.
This request includes:
-
the principal contract document; and
-
any schedules, annexures, or attachments that form part of that contract as executed or
varied up to that date.
Scope and clarifications
-
I seek access to existing documents only. I do not seek the creation of any new document,
summary, index, or compilation.
I do not seek access to:
-
personal information of Defence members or private individuals; or
-
routine correspondence or duplicate copies of the same document.
OFFICIAL
OFFICIAL
2
I accept that commercially sensitive financial information (such as pricing, rate cards, or
unit costs) may be redacted under the FOI Act, provided the remainder of the contract is
released.
Where parts of a document are exempt, I seek access to the document with appropriate
redactions rather than refusal.
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.
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.
I find that a significant amount of resources would have to be diverted to arrange for the required
searches to be undertaken, to then review any documents that were identified as being possibly
relevant to your request, and finally, to undertake the decision making process on any documents
that did meet the parameters of your request.
The preliminary search and retrieval phase undertaken by one team that could reasonably be
expected to hold documents has taken in excess of 7 hours to complete, and has identified 529 pages
of material that fall within scope of your request. Using a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per
page to examine each page for decision making, including deciding whether to grant, refuse or defer
access, or redacting any exempt material from the documents, it would take one staff member in
excess of 44 hours undertake these steps.
In addition, it has been identified that at least one third party consultation would be required to be
undertaken prior to the release of any material, and I estimate this would process would require at
least 2 hours of work per consultation.
I note that the above approximations do not include the time required to draft, write and review a
statement of reasons, nor to create a schedule of documents. Therefore, I regard the actual time
required to fulfil this request to be higher than the estimates 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.
OFFICIAL
