FOI

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has found the Australian Public Service Commission did not intend to intimidate a Freedom of Information organisation when it asked for content that contained ‘unsubstantiated allegations’ about APSC staff to be removed from its website.

The Office of the Victorian Commissioner (OVIC) has published a report on the State of Freedom of Information in Victoria: Five Years in Review 2014-2019. The report provides an overview of the administration of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) (FOI Act) by Victorian government agencies over the past five years. OVIC published the report to measure the […]

Complying with the Freedom of Information Act is a second-order priority for the Minister and the Department of Home Affairs, according to secretary Michael Pezzullo, who thinks his FOI team’s performance is “commendable” considering the limited resources it has to work with. The secretary will not allocate more resources to FOI processing or ask for […]

The Department of Home Affairs has issued an intriguing statement acknowledging it made an “erroneous” referral to the Australian Federal Police earlier this year. It asked the AFP to look into “a matter of alleged unauthorised disclosure” on March 18 but now accepts it was mistaken.

Information commissioner Angelene Falk has fired a warning shot at the Australian Public Service over transparency with the announcement that she is investigating the Department of Home Affairs over its persistent tardiness in dealing with FOI requests. Home Affairs received 734 FOI requests last financial year, excluding requests for personal information, and failed to process […]

The Department of the Environment and Energy has added the first new entries to its freedom-of-information disclosure log since December, 2018, shortly after The Mandarin reported on its serious non-compliance with the federal legislation requiring releases to be logged within 10 days.

The Department of the Environment and Energy has been in breach of the Freedom of Information Act for almost 10 months. That’s how long it’s been since it updated its disclosure log, where it is required to list FOI releases within 10 days of the applicant receiving them. Federal departments routinely fail to meet this requirement but, by volume, DEE is by far the most serious example of non-compliance.

The ABC has uncovered new details of how Australian authorities contributed to refugee Hakeem Al-Araibi almost being shipped back to his persecutors in the kingdom of Bahrain, soon after arriving in Thailand for a holiday. The kingdom, ruled by the Khalifa family, tried to abuse the INTERPOL system by marking Al-Araibi as an international fugitive. […]

Most public servants who process freedom-of-information requests are “sincere, passionate and committed” to government transparency, according to a recent study, but they often face obstacles due to senior executives who see it as a low priority.

Speech by Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk to the Right to Know Day 2019 Information Contact Officer Network information session in Canberra on Sept. 24.

Federal public service leaders want the official FOI guidelines changed to support their standard practice of shielding the names and contact details of staff below senior executive level wherever possible, with many agencies citing harrowing tales of harassment and abuse staff members have suffered after their identities were released in FOI documents.

It is standard practice to block out the names of all but the most senior public servants from documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, often in the name of protecting their personal privacy or safety, but that’s not really how the system is supposed to work.

Catherine Fletcher has been named Western Australia’s Information Commissioner for a five-year term commencing 16 July.