This is an HTML version of an attachment to the Freedom of Information request 'All inward facing documents on the combined library of information and knowledge (CLIK).'.


FOI 55381 
 
 
Request consultation notice due to existence of a practical refusal 
reason under section 24AB of the Freedom of Information Act 1982
 
S 24AB consultation notice of Sharmila (Position Number 62210944),  
Information Access Officer, Information Access Unit, Client Access and Rehabilitation Branch, 
Department of Veterans’ Affairs   
 
Applicant: 

 
 
Mr Arthur Jordan 
 
Decision date: 
 
25 January 2023 
 
FOI reference number: 
LEX 55381 
 
Sent by email: 
 
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx 
 
 
 
Dear Mr Jordan,  
Freedom of Information Request: LEX 55381 
 
Purpose of this notice 

 
1. 
The purpose of this notice is to advise you (as required under section 24AB of the Freedom 
of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) that I intend to refuse your request on the basis that a 
practical refusal reason exist, as defined by section 24AA of the FOI Act.  
 
2. 
Based on the terms of your request, and from initial searches undertaken to respond to your 
request, I am of the view that a practical refusal reason exists because: 
 
a.  Processing your request, as best the Department can understand the terms, is likely to 
result in a substantial and unreasonable diversion of the Department’s resources from 
its other operations (section 24AA(1)(b) of the FOI Act). 
 
Authority to make decision 
 
3. 
I, Sharmila (Position Number 62210944), Information Access Officer, Information Access 
Unit, Client Access and Rehabilitation Branch, am an officer authorised by the Secretary of 


the Department to make decisions about access to documents in the possession of the 
Department in accordance with section 23(1) of the FOI Act.   
  
Scope of your request 
 
4. 
On 5 January 2023, you made a request for access to documents in the possession of the 
Department. Your request sought access to: 
 
 
'...I request all inward facing documents on the combined library of information and 
knowledge (CLIK)...’ 
 
5. 
On 6 January 2023, the Department acknowledged your request via email.  
 
Power to refuse a request 
 
6. 
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. 
 
7. 
However, before I make a decision to refuse your request 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 at page 
5. As mentioned below, you can request more time to consider and respond to this notice. 
Please let me know if you would like additional time to respond. 
 
When does a practical refusal reason exist (section 24AA of the FOI Act) 
 
8. 
The practical refusal reason applicable to your request is that: 
 
a.  processing your request, as best the Department can understand the terms, is likely to 
result in a substantial and unreasonable diversion of the Department’s resources from 
its other operations (section 24AA(1)(b) of the FOI Act). 
  
Request is substantial 
9. 
Under section 24AA(2) of the FOI Act, the Department must have regard to the resources 
that would have to be used for:  
 


  identifying, locating or collating the documents within the filing system of the 
agency; 
 
  deciding whether to grant, refuse or defer access to a document to which the 
request relates, or to grant access to an edited copy of such a document (including 
resources that would have to be used for examining the document or consulting 
with any person or body in relation to the request); 
 
  making a copy or an edited copy, of the document; and 
 
  notifying any interim or final decision on the request. 
 
10.  Further, the Guidelines issued by the Australian Information Commissioner under s 93A of 
the FOI Act (FOI Guidelines) identify matters that may be relevant when deciding whether 
processing the request will unreasonably divert an agency’s resources from its other 
functions. These include: 
 
  the staffing resources available to the agency for FOI processing; 
 
  the impact that processing a request may have on other work in the agency, 
including FOI processing; 
 
  whether an applicant has cooperated in framing a request to reduce the processing 
workload;  
 
  whether there is a significant public interest in the documents requested; and 
 
  other steps taken by an agency or minister to publish information of the kind 
requested by an applicant. 
 
11.  Your request contains broad and undefined terms over a long date period. Services Australia 
provides technical support for CLIK/Drupal. Therefore, the Department reached out to 
Services Australia under our shared services arrangement regarding the feasibility of 
extracting the request information of CLIK and the following assumptions were noted: 
 
  The request requires exporting all internal contents to a common acceptable format 
such as HTML.  
 
  It is assumed that the search will encompass CLIK in its entirety.  
 


  The request poses several challenges for Services Australia: 
 
o  Services Australia will need to explore extra modules for Drupal 7 to experiment, 
test the export function and implement it in Prod. There could be weeks’ effort 
associated with this exercise 
 
o  There are currently no tools available to Services Australia to identify and extract 
the requested pages/information. 
 
o  In the event that all pages or information could be extracted, each individual 
business area would need to review each page to advise a list of content authors 
and publishers. 
 
o  Further, if Services Australia were successful in exporting the pages/information, 
access control issues will need to be considered and addressed, and business areas 
will be required to validate all pages and provide approvals before consideration of 
release of the information. 
 
o  Given the export format will be in HTML, content owner verification processes to 
identify any sensitivities will require the relevant business area to go through the 
information page by page. This may be resource intensive depending on the volume 
of information.  
  
12.  I estimate that several hours of processing time would be required to deal with this request. 
The reasons for this are as follows: 
 
  I estimate that there are thousands of pages of material relevant to your request. 
These pages are contained over thousands of documents identified as being 
relevant to your request.  
 
  From the responses of Information Law and Services Australia, this request would 
be resource intensive and expensive. Services Australia have advised that there are 
costs associated with researching, developing and implementing an extraction tool 
for CLIK. These results would then need to be verified by the relevant business 
areas. Once that verification is done, the CLIK content would have to be collated 
and sent to the relevant business areas for identification of sensitive information.   
 
  From my initial review, it appears that the documents may potentially contain 
material that may be considered to be exempt from release under the FOI Act (for 
example, documents affecting certain operations of agencies under section 47E of 
the FOI Act, etc.). 
 
  Further to the previous point, a statement of reasons will need to be provided to 
you. I anticipate that it would take approximately 2 hours to draft the statement of 
reason for this decision. 


 
13.  Taking these factors into account, I have concluded the request is substantial.  
 
Request is unreasonable 
 
14.  I have considered whether the substantial resource burden would be unreasonable having 
regard to the following:  
 
  The anticipated significant number of hours of processing time is, at face value, an 
unreasonable burden for a single FOI request, taking into account the need to 
process multiple requests at any given time, and the impact such a burden would 
have on responding to other FOI applicants and for the relevant business area to 
undertake their designated duties.  
 
  Due to the broad and complexed nature of your request, the relevant business 
areas would be required to spend a significant amount of time and resources in 
document retrieval and scoping activities. 
  
15.  Taking the above factors into account, I am of the view that the request as it currently stands 
is unreasonable, as well as substantial.  
 
Ways you can revise the scope of your request 
 
16.  You now have an opportunity to revise your request so that the grounds for a practical 
refusal are removed.    
 
17.  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, we 
will be able to pinpoint the documents more quickly and avoid using excessive resources to 
process documents you are not interested in.   
 
18.  For example, you may want to consider: 
 
  providing further clarification about the information/specific documents you are seeking 
access to; 
 
  a narrower scope of documents to a more specific act  
 
 


19.  Please note that even if you do modify your request, it is possible that a practical refusal 
reason under section 24AA may still exist and the Department may need further time to 
process your revised request. This will depend on the revision you agree to make. As far as is 
reasonably practicable, we are happy to provide you with further information to assist you in 
revising your request so that it removes the practical refusal grounds.  
 
Next steps 
 
20.  Before the end of the consultation period, which is COB 8 February 2023 (being 14 days 
from receiving this notice), you must do one of the following, in writing:  
 
  withdraw the request; 
 
  make a revised request; or 
 
  indicate that you do not wish to revise the request.  
 
21.  During this period, you can ask me for help to revise your request. If you revise your request 
in a way that adequately addresses the practical refusal grounds outlined above, we will 
recommence processing it.  
 
22.  If you indicate you do not wish to revise your request, the Department will proceed to make 
a decision on whether to refuse the request on the grounds that processing your request will 
result in a diversion of the Department’s resources under section 24(1) of the FOI Act.  
 
23.  If you do not respond in one of these ways within 14 days (by 8 February 2023), the request 
will be taken to have been withdrawn pursuant to section 24AB(7) of the FOI Act.  
 
24.  If you need more time to respond, please contact the Information Access Unit via the below 
contacts, within the 14 day period to discuss your need for an extension of time.   
 
Suspension of processing time  
 

25.  Please note under section 24AB(8) of the FOI Act, the time for processing your FOI request is 
suspended from the day you receive this notice until the day you do one of the things listed 
above.  
 
26.  An extract of the provisions of the FOI Act that are relevant to this notice are set out at 
Schedule 1
 


Contact us 
 
27.  If you wish to discuss this decision, please do not hesitate to contact the Information Access 
Unit using the following details: 
 
Post:    
Information Access Unit, 
Department of Veterans’ Affairs 
GPO Box 9998, Brisbane QLD 4001 
Email:   
xxxxxxxxxxx.xxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx  
 
Yours sincerely, 
 
 
Sharmila (Position Number 62210944) 
Information Access Officer 
Information Access Unit 
Client Access and Rehabilitation Branch 
Department of Veterans’ Affairs 
  
25 January 2023 
 



 
FOI 55381 
Schedule 1 
 
 
Schedule of relevant provisions in the FOI Act  
 
15  
Requests for access (as related to the requirements for requests) 
 
Persons may request access  
 (1)   
Subject to section 15A, a person who wishes to obtain access to a document of an agency 
or an official document of a Minister may request access to the document.  
 
Requirements for request  
(2)   
The request must:  
(a)   
be in writing; and  
(aa)   
state that the request is an application for the purposes of this Act; and  
(b)   
provide such information concerning the document as is reasonably necessary to 
enable a responsible officer of the agency, or the Minister, to identify it; and  
(c)   
give details of how notices under this Act may be sent to the applicant (for 
example, by providing an electronic address to which notices may be sent by 
electronic communication).  
(2A)    The request must be sent to the agency or Minister. The request may be sent in any of the 
following ways:  
(a)   
delivery to an officer of the agency, or a member of the staff of the Minister, at the 
address of any central or regional office of the agency or Minister specified in a 
current telephone directory;  
(b)   
postage by pre-paid post to an address mentioned in paragraph (a);  
(c)   
sending by electronic communication to an electronic address specified by the 
agency or Minister. 
 
24 
Power to refuse request--diversion of resources etc.  
(1)   
If an agency or Minister is satisfied, when dealing with a request for a document, that a 
practical refusal reason exists in relation to the request (see section 24AA), the agency or 
Minister:  
(a)   
must undertake a request consultation process (see section 24AB); and  
(b)   
if, after the request consultation process, the agency or Minister is satisfied that 
the practical refusal reason still exists--the agency or Minister may refuse to give 
access to the document in accordance with the request.  
(2)   
For the purposes of this section, the agency or Minister may treat 2 or more requests as a 
single request if the agency or Minister is satisfied that:  
(a)   
the requests relate to the same document or documents; or  
(b)   
the requests relate to documents, the subject matter of which is substantially the 
same. 
 
24AA  When does a practical refusal reason exist?  
(1)   
For the purposes of section 24, a practical refusal reason exists in relation to a request for a 
document if either (or both) of the following applies:  


(a)   
the work involved in processing the request:  
(i)   
in the case of an agency--would substantially and unreasonably divert the 
resources of the agency from its other operations; or  
 (ii)   
in the case of a Minister--would substantially and unreasonably interfere 
with the performance of the Minister's functions;  
(b)  
the request does not satisfy the requirement in paragraph 15(2)(b) (identification 
of documents).  
(2)   
Subject to subsection (3), but without limiting the matters to which the agency or Minister 
may have regard, in deciding whether a practical refusal reason exists, the agency or 
Minister must have regard to the resources that would have to be used for the following:  
(a)   
identifying, locating or collating the documents within the filing system of the 
agency, or the office of the Minister;  
(b)   
deciding whether to grant, refuse or defer access to a document to which the 
request relates, or to grant access to an edited copy of such a document, including 
resources that would have to be used for:  
(i)   
examining the document; or  
(ii)   
consulting with any person or body in relation to the request;  
(c)   
making a copy, or an edited copy, of the document;  
(d)   
notifying any interim or final decision on the request.  
(3)   
In deciding whether a practical refusal reason exists, an agency or Minister must not have 
regard to:  
(a)   
any reasons that the applicant gives for requesting access; or  
(b)  
 the agency's or Minister's belief as to what the applicant's reasons are for 
requesting access; or  
(c)   
any maximum amount, specified in the regulations, payable as a charge for 
processing a request of that kind. 
 
24AB  What is a request consultation process?  
 
Scope  
(1)   
This section sets out what is a request consultation process for the purposes of section 24.  
 
Requirement to notify  
(2)   
The agency or Minister must give the applicant a written notice stating the following:  
(a)   
an intention to refuse access to a document in accordance with a request;  
(b)   
the practical refusal reason;  
(c)   
the name of an officer of the agency or member of staff of the Minister (the 
contact person ) with whom the applicant may consult during a period;  
(d)   
details of how the applicant may contact the contact person;  
(e)   
that the period (the consultation period ) during which the applicant may consult 
with the contact person is 14 days after the day the applicant is given the notice.  
 
Assistance to revise request  
(3)   
If the applicant contacts the contact person during the consultation period in accordance 
with the notice, the agency or Minister must take reasonable steps to assist the applicant 
to revise the request so that the practical refusal reason no longer exists.  
(4)   
For the purposes of subsection (3), reasonable steps includes the following:  
(a)   
giving the applicant a reasonable opportunity to consult with the contact person;  


(b)   
providing the applicant with any information that would assist the applicant to 
revise the request.  
 
Extension of consultation period  
(5)   
The contact person may, with the applicant's agreement, extend the consultation period by 
written notice to the applicant.  
 
Outcome of request consultation process  
(6)   
The applicant must, before the end of the consultation period, do one of the following, by 
written notice to the agency or Minister:  
(a)   
withdraw the request;  
(b)   
make a revised request;  
(c)   
indicate that the applicant does not wish to revise the request.  
(7)   
The request is taken to have been withdrawn under subsection (6) at the end of the 
consultation period if:  
(a)   
the applicant does not consult the contact person during the consultation period in 
accordance with the notice; or  
(b)   
the applicant does not do one of the things mentioned in subsection (6) before the 
end of the consultation period.  
 
Consultation period to be disregarded in calculating processing period  
(8)   
The period starting on the day an applicant is given a notice under subsection (2) and 
ending on the day the applicant does one of the things mentioned in paragraph (6)(b) or (c) 
is to be disregarded in working out the 30 day period mentioned in paragraph 15(5)(b).  
Note:     Paragraph 15(5)(b) requires that an agency or Minister take all reasonable steps to notify an applicant of a 
decision on the applicant's request within 30 days after the request is made.  
 
No more than one request consultation process required  
(9)   
To avoid doubt, this section only obliges the agency or Minister to undertake a request 
consultation process once for any particular request. 
 
10