People and Culture Committee

Dear Department of Veterans' Affairs,

Under FOI I seek the minutes of the DVA People and Culture Committee for FY17/18.

Yours faithfully,

Julie

For the Department of Veterans' Affairs,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Veterans' Affairs's handling of my FOI request 'People and Culture Committee'.

Yet another senior DVA executive committee identified by DVA’s own Corporate Plan as existing, yet surprisingly no documentary record, apart from the Corporate Plan, exists...

Yet again the hostility of DVA towards FOI is on full display.

Either DVA has a unethical policy of breaching the Archives Act by destroying records, so as to avoid their capture by FOI, or is the most unique public sector agency in the world, in that its identified executive corporate governance committees never meet and never record anything, ever.

I seek internal review on the basis to claim such records do not exist approaches fantasy, given the existence of these committees is identified by DVA itself.

These types of committee simply do not exist in a vacuum, given the members are all at the SES bands, and they report to the DVA board.

It seems like intentional bad faith is in play here, and it is quite disturbing that DVA would go so far as to knowingly lie (but then again, I guess, your flam s 15AB application that the OAIC knocked back as being too ridiculous proves that your willingness to go that far).

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/p...

Sincerely,

Julie

As the Department of Veterans‘ Affairs has repeatedly failed to be reasonable, I have had no choice but to refer this unethical behaviour to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

I would highlight the unprofessional bad faith behaviour by Veterans’ Affairs, is simply odious and entirely inappropriate.

Julie

Dear Information Law Section, Department of Veterans’ Affairs,

After 110 days of unjustified delay, it is pleasing that the Department has finally dropped its charade that the committee minutes sought - of the committee called the People and Culture Committee at the time of the FOI application (being a rebadging of the long-standing Departmental People Committee) - did not exist (especially given the Department was well aware they did).

It really was completely unjustified for a request for mundane and routine corporate governance records, which the Department should be eager to share given it provides the opportunity for the Department to show it takes corporate governance seriously (which raises the concern why the Department fought tooth and nail in providing access to these and other corporate governance committee records applied for at the same time, most still being given the roundaround by the Department).

While the Herald Sun reported on 9 June 2019 recently that “Veterans are being subjected to hostile and derogatory attitudes” by the Department, it would seem its not just veterans who cop these regrettable behaviours from the Department.

Freedom of information is meant to promote understanding and confidence in public administration, yet too many at the Department see it as poison and the opportunity for aggressive adversarialism, indiscriminately engaging in a childish intransigence to shift from a culture of wilful opaqueness.

It is, simply put, a waste of Commonwealth resources for the Department to string simple FOIs out 110 days, requiring multiple parties to intervene, to get them completed. And as you are aware, no change was made to the FOI scope as the Department was well aware what records were sought, was well aware that the addition of ‘and Culture’ to the People Committee name did not erase its ongoing nature/history, and I rejected the Department’s attempt to replace this FOI in a way that all dates and processes would begin anew, with all dates reset (just to manipulate the FOI stats).

Yours sincerely,

Julie