UNCLASSIFIED

Our references: FA 13/08/00624; ADF2013/26187

 

Dear Ms Garrett

 

I am writing to you in response to your email on 10 August 2012,
purportedly under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) and asking
that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship provide you with a copy
of the following document:

 

·         Incident Detail Report 1-799Q62 from the Department's
Compliance,  Case Management, Detention and Settlement Portal. I also
request any documents attached to the detailed report.

 

The purpose of this email is to advise you that I consider the request to
be invalid under the FOI Act. I will explain my reasons in full below.

 

Requirements of the FOI Act

 

The requirements for a valid FOI request are set out in section 15(2) of
the Act, which provides that:

 

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).

 

The Act envisages that an agency and the applicant will, where necessary
and appropriate, engage in dialogue about the request. The Act also
envisages that there may be instances when an agency will wish to send a
formal legal notice to an applicant, for example, when the agency believes
that it would be a substantial and unreasonable diversion of resources to
process the request or intends to charge the applicant for processing the
request. In addition, the Act provides applicants with review rights which
are activated by the act of the agency ‘notifiying’ the applicant of the
decision.

 

In order to engage in this dialogue, the applicant must provide an address
through which the applicant intends to be contactable. It should be an
address through which the agency will be able to write to the applicant
and receive a response to the communication. It must also be an address
through which the agency can reasonably assume that legal notices will be
received, read and responded to by the applicant. This requirement has
been an element of a valid FOI request since the Act was first enacted in
1982.

 

Issues regarding your request

 

I am not satisfied that the email address you have provided meets the
requirement of ‘details of how notices under this Act may be sent to the
applicant’ (s.15(2)(c) of the Act). In particular, I am not satisfied that
it is an address to which the agency could send a ‘notice’ and reasonably
expect a response. The address you have provided appears to be an address
for publication of correspondence on the internet.

 

Next steps

 

Please confirm that the email address that you have provided is an address
to which the Department can send you notices by close of business Friday
23 August 2013. If you have not provided confirmation by that time, I will
close this request as invalid.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Angela O'Neil

Assistant Director

FOI & Privacy Policy

Department of Immigration and Citizenship

Telephone: (02) 6264 1382

Email: [email address]

 

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