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Freedom of information

Making an FOI request

Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation (ARPC) publishes a large amount of material that is available free of charge and without a Freedom on Information (FOI) request. 

This includes publications, speeches, newsletters, and media releases. You can search our website before you make an FOI request because the material you are looking for may already be available.

Your rights

The FOI Act gives any person the right to:

  • access copies of documents (except exempt documents) that ARPC holds
  • ask for information ARPC holds about you to be changed or annotated if it is incomplete, out of date, incorrect or misleading and
  • seek a review of an ARPC decision not to allow you access to a document or not to amend your personal record.

You can ask to see any document that ARPC holds. We can refuse access to some documents, or parts of documents, that are exempt. Exempt documents may include those relating to national security, documents containing material obtained in confidence, Cabinet documents, or other matters as set out in the FOI Act.

How to make an FOI request

Members of the public seeking access to documents held by the ARPC should lodge a formal FOI request with ARPC. Before doing so, you should check the information published under the Information Publication Scheme (IPS) and FOI disclosure log to see if what you are seeking is already available. Your request must:

  • be in writing (can be email)
  • state that the request is an application for the purposes of the FOI Act
  • provide information about the document(s) you wish to access so that we can process your request
  • provide an address for reply (can be an email address).

You can send your request:

By post: Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation, Gadigal Country, PO Box Q1432, Queen Victoria Building NSW 1230

By email: [email protected]

Requests made by a third party on your behalf 

If you are making an FOI request on behalf of another person, you need to provide a specific, written authority from that person to send copies of documents to you or to allow you to inspect copies of documents containing information about the other person.

Enquiries

If you require assistance with your request, please contact ARPC at [email protected] or by phone 02 8223 6777.

Fees and charges

There is no application fee for 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 most common charges are:

Activity itemCharge
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 premises$6.25 per half hour (or part thereof)
Delivery: posting or delivering a copy of a document at your requestCost of postage or delivery

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. If we decide to impose a charge, we will give you a written estimate and the basis of our calculation. Where the estimated charge is between $20 and $100, we may ask you to pay a deposit of $20, or where the estimated charge exceeds $100, we may ask you to pay a 25% deposit before we process your request.

What you can expect from us

We will tell you within 14 days that we have received your 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 complex.

If you disagree with our decision

When we have made a decision in response to your FOI request, we will send you a letter explaining our decision and your review and appeal rights. 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 ask in writing that we reconsider our decision (internal review). An internal review will be conducted by another officer in ARPC. We will advise you of our new decision within 30 days of receiving your request.

Information Commissioner 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 from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

Complaints

If you are unhappy 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 from the OAIC. 

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.

FOI Disclosure Statement

Publicly available information released following an FOI access request. The Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation (ARPC) is required under section 11C of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to publish a disclosure log on its website.

The disclosure log lists information that has been released in response to an FOI access request. This requirement has applied since 1 May 2011. The disclosure log requirement does not apply to:

  • personal information about any person if publication of that information would be ‘unreasonable’
  • information about the business, commercial, financial or professional affairs of any person if publication of that information would be ‘unreasonable’
  • other information covered by a determination made by the Australian Information Commissioner if publication of that information would be ‘unreasonable’
  • any information if it is not reasonably practicable to publish the information because of the extent of modifications that would need to be made to delete the information listed in the above dot points.

The information listed in our disclosure log has been released by ARPC under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and is available for public access. On the same page as our Disclosure Log, we also provide details of information published voluntarily over the period 1 November 2010 to 31 April 2011, before the disclosure log requirements took effect on 1 May 2011. A link is provided if the information can be downloaded from this website or another website. Information that has been released to an applicant in response to an FOI access request but is not available on our website may be obtained on request. 

A charge may be imposed to reimburse ARPC for the cost incurred in copying or reproducing the information and/or sending it to you. However, there will be no other charge. You will be notified if any copying, reproduction, or postage/delivery charge is payable and required to pay the charge before the information is provided. 

There may be documents in the disclosure log that are currently not available in HTML format. If you are unable to read the format provided, please contact ARPC via the methods listed below. We will try to meet all reasonable requests for an alternate format of the document in a timely manner and at the lowest reasonable cost to you. 

All enquiries relating to our disclosure log should be directed to:

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 02 8223 6792 

Postal Address: Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation, Gadigal Country, PO Box Q1432, Queen Victoria Building NSW 1230.

Requesting information or documents

You can ask to see any document that we hold. We can refuse access to some documents, or parts of documents that are exempt. Exempt documents may include those relating to national security, documents containing material obtained in confidence and Cabinet documents, or other matters set out in the FOI Act.

You can send your request via:

Post: Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation, Gadigal Country, PO Box Q1432, Queen Victoria Building NSW 1230

Disclosure Log

ContentDate ReleasedDocument
ARPC’s February 2023 Supplementary Budget Estimates Briefing Pack Addendum.9 March 2023Briefing Pack Addendum
ARPC’s November 2022 Budget Estimates Briefing Pack.09 December 2022Consultancy Expenditure
Question Time Brief
Statistics for number and value of claims made to ARPC for the period 30 June 2003 to 30 June 201830 November 2018View
The decision and costs to move ARPC offices from Canberra to Sydney30 November 2018View
ARPC received only one FOI request under the FOI Act which was subsequently withdrawn due to the information already available on ARPC’s website2003 to 2013Nil
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