Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I present a supplementary explanatory memorandum to the bill and move government amendments (1) and (2) as circulated together:

(1) Schedule 2, item 53, page 20 (line 8), after "person", insert ", and the applicant is seeking to access a document containing personal information about the other person or information concerning the business, commercial or financial affairs of the other person".

(2) Schedule 2, item 56, page 21 (lines 8 to 20), omit subsection 19(1), substitute:

(1) This section applies if, when dealing with a request for access to a document (including a request that does not comply with the requirements of subsection 15(2)), an agency or Minister is not satisfied of:

(a) the identity of the applicant; or

(b) in the case of a document that contains personal information about a person on whose behalf the request was made, or information concerning the business, commercial or financial affairs of a person on whose behalf the request was made—the identity of a person on whose behalf the request was made.

The amendments to part 5 of schedule 2 moderate the circumstances under which identifying information must be provided by an applicant when making a request. Applicants would only be required to declare when they are making a request on behalf of another person and provide that other person's full name where the request is for that person's personal, business, commercial or financial information. This is a sensible adjustment based on feedback by stakeholders through the committee process.

The amendments also provide that proof of identity is not required for another person whom the applicant is acting on behalf of where the freedom of information request does not concern that person's personal, business, commercial or financial information. The changes reflect that there may be situations where an applicant may wish or need to obtain non-personal information anonymously through another applicant—for example, a community group being able to put in a request on behalf of their constituent, an investigative journalist or whistleblowers. Retaining the requirement for the applicant to provide a name supports a number of policy purposes, including to ensure vexatious applicant declarations are effective and unable to be circumvented through use of a pseudonym.

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