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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 450 asked in the Legislative Council on 13 June 2018 by Hon Rick Mazza

Parliament: 40 Session: 1

DEPARTMENT OF THE PREMIER AND CABINET — FREEDOM OF INFORMATION UNIT

450. Hon RICK MAZZA to the Leader of the House representing the Premier:

I refer to my question without notice 426 asked on 12 June, which the minister requested I place on notice due to the resources required to provide the answer.

(1) Is the Department of the Premier and Cabinet's freedom of information unit under-resourced?

(2) If yes to (1), why?

(3) If no to (1), why did the minister claim that it would take up to four hours to compile a list of overdue FOI applications?

(4) What is the total number of submitted FOI applications and how many of those are overdue?

Hon SUE ELLERY replied:

I thank the honourable member for some notice of the question.

(1) The freedom of information unit is not under-resourced for a reasonable number and scope of FOI applications. The total number of FOI applications received in the 2017–18 financial year on behalf of ministers' offices and the department, 152, is almost double the total number received for the entire 2016–17 financial year, which was 79.

Hon Tjorn Sibma interjected.

Hon SUE ELLERY: I am going to read that again. The total number of FOI applications received in the 2017–18 financial year on behalf of ministers' offices and the department, 152, is almost double the total number received for the entire 2016–17 financial year, which was 79.

(2) Not applicable.

Several members interjected.

The PRESIDENT: Order!

Hon SUE ELLERY: I will continue.

(3)–(4) In accordance with section 13(3) of the Freedom of Information Act, the permitted period is 45 days after the access application is received or such other period as is agreed between the agency and the applicant or allowed by the commissioner. The department does not normally record statistics on applications greater than 25 days past the agreed period as the Information Commissioner does not require that information to be kept. However, a manual search of the FOI applications that are currently with ministerial offices and are overdue by more than 25 days after the agreed period are —

(a) 25 days, three applications;

(b) 35 days, nil; and

(c) 45 days, nil.