Thank you for your email to Freedom of Information (FOI) at Comcare. If
your request meets the requirements for a valid FOI request, an
acknowledgement letter will be sent to you within 14 days. Otherwise, FOI
staff will contact you to discuss your request.

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OFFICIAL: Sensitive

Dear Mr Norwood,

I refer to your below email dated 6 May 2023, in which you state:

“I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a
complete copy of the departments' Freedom of Information (FOI) logs for
the period 2013-2023, including any secondary departments controlled by
the agency.”

In your email you also state:

                "... I am of the view that your online disclosure logs do
not actively reflect your FOI requests that you have received in this
period."

Disclosure log requirements

Under section 11C of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act)
Comcare, as an Australian Government Agency, is required to publish
information that has been released in response to every FOI request,
subject to certain exceptions. This publication is known as a ‘disclosure
log’. The requirement to publish a disclosure log complements the
[1]Information Publication Scheme (IPS). Together these require agencies
and, for the disclosure log, ministers, to publish a range of government
information.

For clarity, the disclosure log requirement does not apply to:

· personal information about any person, if it would be unreasonable to
publish the information (s 11C(1)(a))

· information about the business, commercial, financial or professional
affairs of any person, if publication of that information would be
unreasonable (s 11C(1)(b))

· other information of a kind determined by the Information Commissioner
if publication of that information would be unreasonable (ss 11C(1)(c) and
11C(2))

· any information if it is not reasonably practicable to publish the
information because of the extent of modifications that would need to be
made to delete information listed in one of the above dot points (s
11C(1)(d)).

Further information about Comcare’s disclosure log publication
requirements can be found within the Guidelines published by the Office of
the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) [2]here.

Comcare’s FOI disclosure log is compliant with the requirements as
prescribed by section 11C of the FOI Act and the OAIC Guidelines.
Comcare’s FOI disclosure log is publicly available [3]here. We consider
that this may contain the information you are seeking. If this is what you
are requesting, this is publicly available information and s12(1) of the
FOI Act does not require us to provide this to you in any other form.

However, if you are seeking access to documents held by Comcare that are
not recorded on our disclosure log please provide further detail by reply
email to [4][Comcare request email] in order to make a valid request under the
FOI Act. 

Further clarification required to make valid request

Please note that your below request is currently considered to be an
invalid FOI request as it does not meet the requirements under s15(2) of
the FOI Act.  Under s15(3) of the FOI Act, the agency is required to
assist a person to make a valid FOI request for documents that complies
with s15(2).  Accordingly, I provide the following details to assist you
to make a valid FOI request.

If you would like to make a valid request for documents under the FOI Act,
your request must:

•             be in writing;

•             state that the request is an application for the purposes of
the FOI Act;

•             provide sufficient information concerning the document(s) as
reasonably necessary to enable Comcare to identify it; and

•             give details of your preferred contact method (eg email
address).

If you seek access to documents held by Comcare, could you please provide
sufficient information in order for Comcare to identify what documents you
are seeking. 

Please contact me at [5][Comcare request email] if you have any questions
regarding this email.

Kind regards,

Stephanie

Legal Adviser | Statutory Oversight Team

Legal Group

GPO Box 9905, Canberra, ACT 2601

Ph: 1300 366 979 |[6]www.comcare.gov.au

[7]Comcare Logo

Please note: This email and attachments may contain information subject to
legal professional privilege or information that is otherwise sensitive
and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you
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and permanently deleted this email.

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