Crossbench senator Rex Patrick says the department is not taking freedom of information seriously

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The home affairs department’s delayed handling of freedom of information requests has led to almost 8,000 being automatically refused, prompting accusations it is keeping documents secret by “simply ignoring its obligations in law”.

Data released to senator Rex Patrick shows the department failed to process 11,131 of the 36,126 FOI requests within the standard 30-day statutory timeframe in the past two years. That’s almost one in every three FOI requests received.

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Typically, when the initial time limit expires, the department can seek an extension, either from the applicant or the information watchdog.

But the data shows that for the vast majority of cases it has simply allowed the FOI to lapse, leading to an automatic, or deemed, refusal to provide documents.

About 7,800 of the 11,131 delayed FOIs qualified as deemed refusals, the data shows.

The department only sought and obtained 3,246 time extensions from applicants.

Patrick said the data shows the department is “not taking freedom of information seriously”.

“I am particularly concerned with the low number of time extension requests and high number of deemed refusals – cases where the department has simply failed to act in accordance with its legal obligations,” he told Guardian Australia. “These statistics reveal a very clear pattern in which the department obstructs public access to information by simply ignoring its obligations in law.”

In a statement, the department said it complied with FOI law to manage the processing of requests for documents, and noted it had “the highest volume” of FOI requests of any commonwealth agency.

Independent statistics clearly show the home affairs department has a massive workload of FOI requests, mostly made by those seeking personal information.

“The department’s FOI practices are consistent with the practices of other government departments,” a spokesperson said.

The department said it had improved its compliance rate – the number of requests finalised within statutory timeframes – from 28.9% in 2016/17 to 86.5% in 2017/18.

“Following a 25% increase in cases, the 2018-19 compliance rate was 75%. The compliance rate for 2019-20 year to date is 82.60%,” the spokesperson said.

Patrick said responsibility for handling FOI lay with the departmental secretary, Mike Pezzullo.

“It’s an issue I will be raising with him directly at estimates,” Patrick said.

“Mr Pezzullo has spoken out strongly against the leaking of official information. That said, his position on transparency of government information has a certain consistency about it. He doesn’t want information to be released unlawfully – or lawfully.”