FOI/2019/164

 

Dear Sir/Madam

 

Thank you for your email dated 5 July 2019 to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (the Department), in which you made a request to the Department under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act) in the following terms:

 

Under the FOI Act, I seek copies of any emails in Ms Foster’s email account that relate to the matters referred to in the above-mentioned Guardian article. I constrain my request to documents dated between Monday 24 June 2019 to Friday 28 June 2019 (inclusive). These dates should capture when Guardian journalists made inquiries of the Department in relation to these matters and how the fallout was dealt with by Ms Foster, being the highly paid senior executive with oversight of the Department’s corruption identified in the article. The documents the subject of my request are in the public interest because they will provide evidence as to whether a highly paid, very senior, public servant in the Prime Minister’s Department has countenanced public sector corruption.

 

Timeframe for receiving your decision

 

We received your request on 5 July 2019 and the 30 day statutory period for processing your request commenced from the day after that date. You should therefore expect a decision from us by Monday 5 August 2019. The period of 30 days may be extended in certain circumstances. We will advise you if there is any extension of time.

 

Charges

 

Agencies may decide that an applicant is liable to pay a charge in respect of a request for access to documents. If the Department decides that you are liable to pay a charge, we will send you a preliminary assessment of the charge as soon as possible.

 

Publication of documents

 

Please note that information released under the FOI Act may later be published online on our disclosure log at http://www.dpmc.gov.au/pmc/accountability-and-reporting/freedom-information/foi-disclosure-logs/foi-disclosure-log, subject to certain exceptions. If you think you might wish to raise any objections to the publication of any of the information which may be released to you please contact us by email at [DPMC request email].  If you do wish to object to the publication of information, you would need to provide supporting reasons.

 

Exclusion of officers’ names and contact details

 

For documents that fall within scope of the request, it is the Department’s policy to withhold:

•             any person’s signature;

•             the names and contact details of Australian Public Service officers not in the Senior Executive Service (SES);

•             the mobile or direct numbers of SES officers;

•             the names and contact details of Ministerial staff at a level below Chief of Staff.

 

The names and other details of SES officers will not be withheld unless there is some reason for that information to be exempt from release. If you require signatures, the names and contact details of non-SES officers or Ministerial staff below the level of Chief of Staff, or the mobile or direct numbers of SES officers please let us know at [DPMC request email] so the decision-maker may consider; otherwise we will take it that you agree to that information being excluded from the scope of your request (that is, the information will be treated as irrelevant and redacted from any documents for release).

 

We will write again when the Department has more information.  Further information on FOI processing can be found at the website of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at http://www.oaic.gov.au/foi-portal/about_foi.html.