Information Requests
Access to information
On 9 May 2012, the Australian Information Commissioner amended the guidelines issued under s. 93A of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to state that the Department of the House of Representatives, the Department of the Senate and the Department of Parliamentary Services were subject to the FOI Act. Prior to this, the guidelines stated that the FOI Act did not apply to the departments of the Parliament. This stated change did not result from an amendment to the FOI Act or any other legislation.
The Parliamentary Budget Office is exempted expressly from the application of the FOI Act, under s. 7(1) and Division 1 of Part I of Schedule 2 of the Act.
The other three parliamentary departments continue to respond to requests for documents as they are received.
The Department of Finance and Deregulation (which is part of government) administers a number of parliamentary entitlements and provides services to members of parliament and their staff, see http://www.finance.gov.au/
The Remuneration Tribunal (which is an independent government authority) makes determinations in relation to members of parliament, including ministers, concerning salary or other allowances and matters that are significantly related, see http://www.remtribunal.gov.au/.
There are information publication plans (IPP) for the following parliamentary departments:
Disclosure logs for the three departments are also provided: