Legal compliance and remediation program
Dear Services Australia,
I wish to request:
The most recent dashboard, registry, ledger or other document which lists or describes the 144 breaches of the law currently being investigated by Services Australia as part of the above programme. I'm sure the programme of work is hosted centrally in some kind of registry or dashboard. If the active work programme is separated over multiple dashboards, registries or spreadsheets, this request asks for the most recent version of those.
The existence of these were disclosed by your Deputy Secretary in Estimates this week.
To ensure the request is of a controllable scope:
- I limit my request to the title or name given to each issue in the document, and any factual description of it. I do not seek deliberative material or legal advice relating the issue, the perspectives of the policy owners or oversight bodies on the issue, any status (green/red/amber), discussion of fixes or proposed fixes. To be clear: I seek only the factual material naming or describing the issue.
- I limit my request to entries where DSS or the Department of Employment or Workplace Relations are the listed policy stakeholder.
- I do not seek the entries in relation to income apportionment or the child support (below 35% care) issue disclosed by DSS last week.
There is a high public interest involved in the disclosure of maladministration and clear benefit to prompt disclosure for individuals' appeal rights. Prompt disclosure will be of great assistance to those seeking law reform, accountability and practical remedies for their clients. They should not be asked to wait while the APS briefs itself back and forth. It is important to immediately communicate known issues to the public who bear the financial and human costs.
I do note the agency (in a perhaps surprising development for affected policy entities) committed to returning a list of the 144 issues to the Senate. I will withdraw this request in the event such a list (with adequate descriptive detail) is published prior to the statutory processing period for this request.
Yours faithfully,
Frank N Fearless
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References
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