FOI Request: Sydney Consolidation Project - Eveleigh Precinct Closure
Dear CSIRO FOI team,
I request access to the following information and documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1982:
- Minutes, pre-reading, supplemental documents and presentations relating to the "Sydney Consolidation Project" from ET153, ET152 and ET161
- Work product, documents, models and presentations related to the investigation/discussion of alternative central Sydney arrangements such as; taking up a presence at a university, shared working spaces, embedding with a corporate collaborator, committing to a smaller location or reducing the current physical footprint. Limiting these documents to just the Sydney Eveleigh site.
Of course, please remove personally identifiable materials and exclude commercial-in-confidence related materials.
Yours faithfully,
Hubert Farnsworth
Our ref: FOI2025/50
Dear Mr Farnsworth,
Thank you for your email to CSIRO’s Freedom of Information Team. Your email has been received and will be actioned as appropriate.
If an FOI request is valid, a decision in response to the request is due 30 days after the request is received by CSIRO(Monday, 11th August 2025, noting the 30 day processing period falls on Saturday, 9th August 2025. This timeframe can be extended under the FOI Act including where third-party consultation is required. CSIRO notifies applicants when an extension is required.
If an FOI request is not valid, the 30-day timeframe does not commence. CSIRO contacts applicants to advise them of invalidity within 21 days of receipt of the application.
Charges may be imposed for processing your request pursuant to section 29 of the FOI Act. These charges are calculated by reference to the time spent processing a request, including time spent searching and retrieving relevant documents, preparing any documents for release, consulting and decision- making. In the event CSIRO decides that you are liable to pay a charge for the processing of your request, you will be notified of a preliminary charges assessment and you will have the opportunity to contend that the charge should not be imposed or should be reduced.
We look forward to hearing from you.
More information about accessing information held by CSIRO, including via freedom of information, can be found at Access to information - CSIRO.
Kind regards
CSIRO’s FOI Team
Good Afternoon,
I am in the process of actioning your request, and I wanted to seek your guidance on interpreting your request.
In my view, it is open to me to take a narrow interpretation of your request which limits it to 'formal documents that were prepared for the purpose of informing, or consulting with, a decision maker or stakeholder about changes to CSIRO's Sydney offices'. I consider such a request is manageable.
However, there is an alternative broader interpretation of your request which, in my view, would not be manageable. In particular, "work products [and] documents .... related to the investigation/discussion of alternative Syndey arrangements" could capture informal emails among colleagues about site locations which are only tangentially related to the Eveleigh closure, including - for example - discussions about the practical and administrative aspects of any staff moves. To demonstrate this, I have asked our Records team to search the electronic archive for any documents that contain the phrases 'Sydney Consolidation', 'Eveleigh closure' and 'Eveleigh relocation'. This search has yielded over 40,000 results. If this your preferred interpretation, it is likely to result in a s 24AA practical refusal.
Therefore, I wanted to seek your input at this point. Considering the wider context and the likely value of the documents, I believe it is likely that the first, narrower interpretation is the correct one.
I look forward to your response,
Regards,
Mitchell Tucker
Legal Counsel | CSIRO
Dear Mr Tucker,
Thank you for your timely reply.
Yes you are correct about my vagueness, my apologies. Your first interpretation is great. Final formal documents are fine, major revisions would also be useful but i leave this to your discretion about the practicality of that.
No need include informal communications, tangentially related documents, matters relating to administration etc. If I require any of these I will file a more targeted request.
Thank you for you time and effort, it has not gone unnoticed.
In Science,
Hubert Farnsworth
Dear Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's handling of my FOI request 'FOI Request: Sydney Consolidation Project - Eveleigh Precinct Closure'.
This FOI has taken considerably longer than the required 30 day period. I diligently responded to your request for clarification on scope and limited the request in hope of a speedy reply. Please reply to the original FOI. In addition please inform me why there has been a delay.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: http://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/fo...
in Science,
Hubert Farnsworth
OFFICIAL
Dear Applicant,
You will note this morning I tried to resend to you the email, containing the decision, that was originally sent to you on 11 August. We have just noted that today's email to you 'bounced back' due to the size of the attachments - the undeliverable report was sent to our 'junk email' folder.
I am now re-sending the decision, schedule, and the documents. However, I will send the documents in two parts. Attached is Part 1, which contains pages 1-131
Could you please confirm if you have received these emails, and if you still wish to request an internal review.
Regards
Dear FOI,
Apologies for my delay, I have been traveling the galaxy delivering packages and am now back on earth.
Thank you for your reply, I have now received all the included documents.
I am hesitant to relinquish my formal request for an internal review, noting I have two questions. However, maybe they can be answered simply and informally, and we can avoid the whole rigmarole of an internal review. However, I am happy to do an internal review if that’s the proper protocol.
My two questions are:
1)
Re: the use of Section 47(1)(b) and the withholding of the “CSIRO - CBRE High Level Scoping Study” under the grounds that it has commercial value. Given the report was given to CSIRO on 8 Aug 2024, the contents, scope and reasoning for the report are detailed in the released documents as:
“In further exploring Sydney Consolidation options, a discreet market sounding was undertaken by
CBRE to explore opportunities for the rationalisation, consolidation and/or relocation of CSIRO’s
Sydney footprint. The market analysis included considerations of our current sites, potential to lease
sites, and the identification of potential greenfield and brownfield sites within a 25 km radius of the
Sydney CBD, with a focus on sites that best meet CSIRO’s specific requirements, including
commercial and science focussed [sic] precincts.”
And key findings are identified as:
“Concurrently, for the reasons captured in this paper, as well as an affirmation of the preferred option identified as part of the CBRE Sydney Consolidation Options Study (August 2024), it is proposed that CSIRO pursues a consolidation option that focuses on our existing Marsfield site ...”
It seems highly relevant to confirm and understand the work undertaken by CBRE and their influence on this project. Additionally, given the more-than-year-old nature of the document, a complete exemption seems excessive.
I put it to you that this document is key to understanding the influences that generated this decision. The vast majority of the document would no longer hold commercially sensitive information due to its age, and given the decision has already been made, this further reduces the commercial utility of the document to CSIRO. It should also be noted this request is being made in a time of heightened scrutiny on the use of outside ‘expert’ consultants and their role in government.
Can you please advise, if I formally request this information to be reviewed, how likely I am to be successful in getting this report released (with the necessary partial redactions)?
2)
What can I read into the lack of financial modelling, Excel workbooks and/or formulaic financial calculations in the document release? I note that several times throughout the released documents there are tables of comparative costings between different CSIRO sites and alternative options. However, there is no “shown work” of how any of these numbers are calculated. Examples of this include: Document 16 – Cost of sites comparison.
Can I take it that no Excel (or other financial modelling software) was included in the documents and that none exists? If not, can you please include them in the release of documents, as how these numbers were calculated is clearly in the public interest given their continued reference in the ultimate decision.
---------------------------------------------------
Finally, just a note: throughout the released documents you have left in what I assume are staff comments. Although I applaud you on the transparency, as these do provide critical insight into the thought processes of the people involved in this decision, I do note that these appear to include personally identifying information of CSIRO staff that appear to otherwise be redacted in the documents. This also additionally applies to the metadata still attached to the documents you have provided (although at a lesser scale). You may want to review your document release procedure to a) include checks for this, b) wipe metadata before providing documents, and c) check for large file sizes.
You have been extremely helpful with my request, and I can see — except for the little snafu involving the attachments — very diligent and timely. Please let me know if a quick answer can be given for my two inquiries, or if I should proceed with a formal review, or if I am unlikely to receive any new information and should simply close out this request.
In Science
Prof Hubert Farnsworth
OFFICIAL
Dear applicant
Thank you for your query below.
Having considered your questions, we are of the view that they cannot be
answered any more simply or informally than an internal review would
provide, and that there is therefore not likely to be any economy in
attempting to do so. Accordingly, if you do wish to seek review based on
those questions an internal review would be the best course of action.
Given the administrative confusion we seem to have enountered with the
sending and receiving of documents and emails at certain times, we are
taking the date you received access to documents to be 2 October 2025
(rather than 11 August 2025), and that you therefore have until 3 October
2025 to submit an internal review request. You can do so by return email
at any time until that date.
If you do choose to do so, to ensure we understand the grounds of your
potential internal review I have summarised them as follows:
1. You query whether the document “CSIRO – CBRE High Level
Scoping Study” was properly withheld in its entirety pursuant to s
47(1)(b) of the FOI Act (‘commercially valuable information’), given its
age (August 2024) and its pertinance to relevant decision-making and
understanding the work undertaken by CBRE and its influence on the
project. Therefore you would be seeking review of the 'access refusal'
decision in respect of document 4 in the Schedule only.
2. You query whether additional documents concerning financial
modelling, excel workbooks and/or financial calculations should have been
returned in our document searches. Therefore you would be seeking review
on a purported ‘access refusal’ to documents which CSIRO considers do not
exist (or cannot be found) on the basis that not all reasonable steps were
taken to find such documents under s 24A(1) of the FOI Act – also called a
review on ‘reasonable searches’ grounds.
Limiting the scope of an internal review request helps us to focus our
limited processing resources on the salient points. If our above summary
is accurate, and you are happy to limit your internal review request in
the way it describes, please let us know so (if and when you lodge your
internal review request). Of course, it is open to you to seek review of
any/all reviewable parts of the original decision as set out in the FOI
Act. Further information about seeking review is also set out in Schedule
A to the original decision.
If you have any queries on this matter please don’t hesitate to contact
us. Otherwise, we will keep an eye out for any internal review request you
may choose to make via. our inbox ([1][CSIRO request email]).
Kind regards
CSIRO FOI Team