Thank you for contacting the Freedom of Information (FOI) team at the
Attorney-General’s Department (the department). We get a high volume of
emails and FOI applications and work to respond as promptly as possible.
This email acknowledges your correspondence and provides some general
information in relation to FOI.  
Please note that we will only respond to emails about the Freedom of
Information Act 1982 (the FOI Act). For information on how to make a
request under the FOI Act please refer to:
https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protect....
For enquiries about other matters, please refer to:
https://www.ag.gov.au/about-us/connect-u...
The statutory processing time for FOI requests is 30 days, however this
may be extended if the department needs to consult third parties or for
other reasons. If you have submitted an FOI request, the department will
write to you again within 30 days of receiving your request. This
correspondence may: 
* seek further information from you to help us process your request, 
* provide you with a decision on your FOI request, or 
* discuss whether an extension of time is needed to process your request.
Please do not send duplicate emails as this may cause delays to processing
times.
This FOI inbox is monitored business hours Monday to Friday, excluding
public holidays.
You can expect our team to provide a helpful, respectful service and we
expect respectful engagement in return.
Under s 89L of the FOI Act, disrespectful, threatening or abusive language
may be an abuse of the access action process. If this happens, we may not
be able to help you or we might take steps to manage how we communicate
with you. 
If you have received this transmission in error please notify us
immediately by return e-mail and delete all copies. If this e-mail or any
attachments have been sent to you in error, that error does not constitute
waiver of any confidentiality, privilege or copyright in respect of
information in the e-mail or attachments.
If you have received this transmission in error please notify us
immediately by return e-mail and delete all copies. If this e-mail or any
attachments have been sent to you in error, that error does not constitute
waiver of any confidentiality, privilege or copyright in respect of
information in the e-mail or attachments.

OFFICIAL
Dear Mr Beckinsale

Thank you for your request, which was received by the Attorney-General’s Department (the department) Freedom of Information team on 26 March 2024.

In relation to your request for the 'mechanism giving jurisdiction to the government', we note that the right of access under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) is to existing documents held by a government agency or minister rather than requesting answers to questions or as a means of delegating research. You may wish to direct such questions to the Parliamentary Education Office at https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parlia....

However, we are able to search for documents the department holds relating to the "consent of the governed". In order to assist our searches, would you kindly be able to provide more information about what you mean by this term to ensure we identify the specific documents that are of interest to you.

We look forward to your response.

Kind regards
Rebekah
Freedom of Information & Privacy
Attorney-General’s Department
Phone: (02) 6141 6666 | Email: [AGD request email]
OFFICIAL

show quoted sections

OFFICIAL
OFFICIAL
Dear Mr Beckinsale

I write to follow up on my email of 3 April 2024 below. I note we are yet to receive a response from you. We are unable to process your request until we receive more information regarding what you mean by the "consent of the governed" to allow us to identify the documents to which you seek access. Please consider me a contact person who is available to assist in revising your request so that it can be processed.

Please note you have 14 days from today to make a revised request in writing. If you do not wish to proceed with your FOI request, you may either withdraw your request or advise us that you do not wish to revise your request. If you choose not to revise your request, you will be issued a practical refusal decision under s 24AA(1)(b) of the FOI Act (see https://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/view...).

If we do not receive a response from you by COB Thursday 25 April 2024, we will consider your request to be withdrawn.

Kind regards
Rebekah
Freedom of Information & Privacy
Attorney-General’s Department
Phone: (02) 6141 6666 | Email: [AGD request email]

OFFICIAL
OFFICIAL

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Beckinsale

I am following up on my emails of 3 and 11 April 2024. We still have yet to hear from you. In my email of 11 April, I advised that you had until COB Thursday 25 April 2024 to respond to our request to revise your request scope to allow us to identify the documents you are seeking. As the 25 April is a public holiday, we will revise this date to the next business day. As such, if we do not receive a response from you by COB Friday 26 April 2024 we will consider your request to be withdrawn.

If you require assistance to help revise your request, please consider me a contact officer available to help you do so.

Kind regards
Rebekah
Freedom of Information & Privacy
Attorney-General’s Department
Phone: (02) 6141 6666 | Email: [AGD request email]

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Beckinsale

I refer to your FOI request, FOI24/161. The purpose of this email is to advise you that the department is treating your request as withdrawn and it is now finalised.

We wrote to you on 11 April 2024 advising that we could not process your request as it did not provide enough detail about the documents sought to allow us to search for and identify them.

Our email invited you to revise your request to be more specific about the documents you are seeking and that you had 14 days in which to do so in writing. I also offered you my assistance as an appointed contact officer to help formulate a valid request if needed.

We advised that if we did not hear from you by COB 26 April 2024, we would consider your request to be withdrawn. We have not received a response and as such the department has withdrawn your request in accordance with s 24AB(7) of the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

General advice prepared by the OAIC on the steps in processing an FOI request is available at: https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-infor....

Kind regards
Rebekah
Freedom of Information & Privacy
Attorney-General’s Department
Phone: (02) 6141 6666 | Email: [AGD request email]

show quoted sections