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Thank you for contacting the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

Your email has been received and will be actioned shortly.

National Information Access Processing

Department of Veterans’ Affairs

Phone: 1800 555 254

[1]www.dva.gov.au/about-us/our-business-reporting/freedom-information

References

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1. http://www.dva.gov.au/about-us/our-busin...

Dear Mr Parnell,

I refer to your request for access to documents held by the Department of
Veterans’ Affairs (Department) under the Freedom of Information Act 1982
(Cth) (FOI Act).

Your request was received by the Department on 5 November 2020 and was
made in the following terms:

"...What bonuses were paid & how much to DVA Secretary, staff,
contractors, lawyers and Contracted Medical Advisers by the

Australian Governments bonus payments today 5/11/2020. If the date is
incorrect within the last and next 2 weeks."

The Department has 30 days to finalise your request. The 30 day statutory
timeframe commenced the day after your request was received by the
Department.

Ordinarily you should expect a decision from the Department by 7 December
2020.

Interrupted work practices impacted by COVID-19

The Department is continuing to work through its FOI case load as quickly
as possible. However, the Department is and will continue to experience an
interruption in the way it will be able to manage FOI requests. As you are
likely to be aware, COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has been declared a pandemic by
the World Health Organisation. As the Department focuses its efforts on
managing the impact of COVID-19 on its critical services and employees,
other non-critical services may not be delivered within expected
timeframes. It is possible that during this time, business areas that
would ordinarily have capacity to undertake searches and assist in the
processing of FOI requests may not be readily available to provide that
assistance. This may have an impact on the manner and timeframe in which
the Department can process FOI requests.

We apologise for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience during
this period.

When the processing period may be extended or suspended

There are times when the timeframe for processing your request might be
extended by an additional 30 days. This can occur where an extension of
time has been agreed to by yourself under section 15AA of the FOI Act or
where the OAIC has granted an extension of time under sections 15AB or
15AC of the FOI Act. In addition, if documents you seek contain
information of third parties and the Department is of the view that is
practical to consult with the third parties, then the Department will be
afforded an additional 30 days to undertake that consultation process (see
sections 15(6), 26A, 27 and 27A of the FOI Act). The Department will
advise you if a third party consultation process is required and of the
revised due date for your request to be finalised by. Additionally, there
are occasions where the time to process your request may be suspended.
This will usually take place if a practical refusal consultation process
takes place (section 24AB of the FOI Act) or if a charges notice is issued
to process your request (section 29 of the FOI Act). If the Department
decides that either of these apply to your request, the Department will
notify you.

Communication with you

The FOI Act requires that you provide us with an address which we can send
notices to. You have advised your email address is:
[1][FOI #6868 email]. We will send all notices
and correspondence to this address. Please advise us if you wish
correspondence to be sent to another address or if your address changes.
If you do not advise us of changes to your address, correspondence and
notices will continue to be sent to the address specified above.

FOI Disclosure log – Publication of documents released under the FOI Act

Please note that information released under the FOI Act may be published
in a disclosure log on the Department’s website at
[2]https://www.dva.gov.au/about-us/overview....
Section 11C of the FOI Act requires this publication, however it is
subject to certain exceptions, including where publication of personal,
business, professional or commercial information would be unreasonable.

When a decision is provided to you, the Department will advise if the
documents released to you will be published on the Department’s FOI
Disclosure log.

Contacting us about your FOI request

We will email again when the Department has more information. Should you
have any enquiries concerning this matter, please send an email to
[3][email address].

Further information on FOI processing can be found at the website of the
OAIC at [4]https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-infor....

Yours sincerely

Jess

Jess (position number 62227602)

Information Access Officer

Information Law Section

Legal Services and Audit Branch

Department of Veterans’ Affairs

t 1800 555 254 | e [5][email address] | [6]www.dva.gov.au

p GPO Box 9998, Canberra ACT 2601

[7]cid:image001.png@01D0027A.1DAB84F0

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Dear Mr Parnell,

Please find attached a Statement of Reasons in response to your FOI
request. In particular, I would like to draw your attention to item 12 on
page 3 of the document, which contains an explanation from the Business
Area on why no documents were identified meeting the scope of your
request.

Kind regards,

Jess

Jess (position number 62227602)

Information Access Officer

Information Law Section

Legal Services and Audit Branch

Department of Veterans’ Affairs

t 1800 838 372 | e [1][email address] | [2]www.dva.gov.au

p GPO Box 9998, Canberra ACT 2601

[3]cid:image001.png@01D0027A.1DAB84F0

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