Submitting an FOI application
To be a valid application under FOI Act, your request must:
- be in writing (for instance, by letter or email)
- state that the request is an application for the purposes of the FOI Act
- provide sufficient information about the document(s) to enable us to easily identify and locate them
- provide an address for reply. This may be a postal or email address.
You can send your request:
By email to:FOI@infrastructureaustralia.gov.au
By post to: FOI Coordinator
Infrastructure Australia
Level 19
60 Martin Place
Sydney NSW 2000
If you require assistance with your request, please contact the FOI Coordinator on 02 8114 1900 or by email at FOI@infrastructureaustralia.gov.au
Fees and Charges
There is no application fee for making an FOI request.
There are no processing charges for requests for access to documents containing only personal information about you. However, processing charges may apply to other requests. The nature and amount of processing charges are set by regulations made under the FOI Act. The most common charges are:
| Activity | Charge |
|---|---|
| Search and retrieval: time we spend searching for or retrieving a document | $15.00 per hour |
| Decision making: time we spend in deciding to grant or refuse a request, including examining documents, consulting with other parties, and making deletions | First five hours: Nil Subsequent hours: $20 per hour |
| Transcript: preparing a transcript from a sound recording, shorthand or similar medium | $4.40 per page of transcript |
| Photocopy | $0.10 per page |
| Inspection: supervision by an agency officer of your inspection of documents or hearing or viewing an audio or visual recording at our | $6.25 per half hour (or part thereof) |
| Delivery: posting or delivering a copy of a document at your request | Cost of postage or delivery |
If we decide to impose a charge, we will give you a written estimate and the basis of our calculation. Depending on the estimate, we may ask you to pay a deposit before we process your request.
You can ask for the charge to be waived or reduced for any reason, including financial hardship or on the grounds of public interest. If you do so, you should explain your reasons and you may need to provide some evidence.
How we will process your request
We will acknowledge receipt of a valid request within 14 days of having received it. Information about what constitutes a valid request is set out above under ‘Submitting an FOI application. We will take reasonable steps to help you to make a valid request. We will also give you an estimate of the charges that apply to your request.
We will give you our decision within 30 days unless that time has been extended. If a document contains information about a third party, we will need to consult them and may need to extend the time to give you our decision by another 30 days. We may also seek your agreement to extend the time by up to 30 days if your request is large or complex.
When we have made a decision about your FOI request, we will send you a letter explaining our decision and your review and appeal rights.
Your rights
Review of decisions
You can ask for the following decisions to be reviewed:
- if we refuse to give you access to all or part of a document or if we defer giving you access
- if we impose a charge
- if we refuse to change or annotate information about you that you claim is incomplete, incorrect, out of date or misleading
A third party who disagrees with our decision to give you documents that contain information about them can also ask for our decision to be reviewed.
Internal review
You can request in writing that we reconsider our decision through an internal review. An internal review will be conducted by another officer in our agency. We will advise you of our new decision within 30 days of receiving your request.
Information Commission review
You can ask the Australian Information Commissioner to review our original decision or our decision on internal review within 60 days of the date of decision (or 30 days after you are notified if you are an affected third party). The Information Commissioner can affirm or vary the decision or substitute a new decision. The Information Commissioner may decide not to conduct a review in certain circumstances. More information is available at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) website at www.oaic.gov.au.
Complaints
If you dissatisfied with the way we have handled your request, you can complain to the Australian Information Commissioner who may investigate our actions. More information is available on the OAIC's website. The Commonwealth Ombudsman can also investigate complaints about our actions. However, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Information Commissioner will consult to avoid the same matter being investigated twice.