Page 79 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 8 April 1992
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request is accompanied not by a fee but by a request for remission, time limits are suspended. In a sense you could say, Madam Speaker, that poor applicants, for example, or public-spirited applicants, for example, are second-class applicants under our present legislation.
The problem becomes more acute in cases where applicants wish to exercise the right to have a decision reviewed. The Act provides for internal reviews, and applicants can request such reviews by paying a $40 fee. A review must be requested within 28 days of the applicant being told about the original decision. Applicants can again ask for remission of that $40 fee, and again the agency is under no time constraint to make a decision on the remission of the fee.
I know of one case where an applicant had put in a request for review of a decision well within the 28-day limit. The agency took several weeks to make a decision on whether to remit the fee, and by the time a decision had been made the 28-day period had long since expired. The agency had, in effect, killed off the request for review by sitting on its hands. The agency, I might add, had the cheek then to write back to the applicant saying that his request for review had been validated after the 28-day period had expired but they would, through the kindness of their hearts, proceed with the review. That is an unacceptable discretion, I think, Madam Speaker, to put in the hands of a bureaucrat. The Act requires a review of the decision to be made within 14 days - - -
Mr Berry: It sounds like an application from Gary Humphries. You mucked it up.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, it was not mucked up, Madam Speaker. It was an appropriate application and it was not processed because of a delay on the part of a department. It might even have been the Minister's own department; who knows?
Mr Kaine: He may have deliberately obstructed it.
MR HUMPHRIES: It may have been, Madam Speaker; I will not comment on that. An amendment to the Act is what we need. The Act requires a review of the decision to be made within 14 days; but, with the ability to stall on the decision to remit a fee, the agency in this case effectively gave itself a massive extension of time.
This Bill, Madam Speaker, is designed to close both of the loopholes I have just described. It does this specifically by adding two new subsections - one concerning initial requests for access to information and a second dealing with internal reviews. Section 14 of the principal Act is amended by adding a section which states that, where a person requests access to a document and the request is not accompanied by a fee but is accompanied by a request for remission of the fee, that request for access is to be treated as a formal application unless and until the agency tells the applicant that his or her application for remission has been wholly or partially unsuccessful. In other words, the clock starts ticking straightaway and there is no room for an agency to buy time by stalling on a remission decision.
The same applies to the amendment to section 59 which deals with internal reviews. That section is amended so that, where a person requests a review of a decision and the request is not accompanied by a fee but is accompanied by a request for remission of fees, the request is taken as formal unless and until the
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