Right to Information

How to access information

You have a right to access personal and non-personal information held by us under the Right to Information Act 2009 (RTI Act), and access or amend your personal information held by us under the Information Privacy Act 2009 (IP Act).

These laws give the community greater access to information (where it isn’t contrary to the public interest to do so), provide equal access to information across all community sectors, and provide protection for individuals’ privacy.

Searching for information

Before applying for information, check to see if it is already available on our website.

Information about our services and business operations may be accessed through the following avenues:

• Publication scheme: contains a guide and links to the information that we routinely make available on our website.
• Disclosure log: non-personal information released through RTI applications will be available to the public. At this time, no documents considered suitable for inclusion have been requested or released.

If you can't find the information you are looking for on our website, contact our Right to Information and information privacy coordinator by emailing corporate@lao.org.au.

They will determine if the information can be released through our free Administrative access scheme or if you will need to make a formal Right to information (RTI) or Information privacy (IP) application.

Administrative access scheme

Our Administrative access scheme makes it easier, faster and cheaper for you to access certain documents.

You can apply for administrative access to:

• all the documents you have given to us ('the Office')
• all the documents the Office has given to you
• documents which are publicly available.

There is no fee for administrative access.

If you would like to apply for administrative access to documents, please write to us or send an email (with ‘Administrative access request’ in the subject line), and provide the following information:

• which documents you want
• whether you would like the documents to be given to you in hardcopy
• how you would like the documents delivered (by email, to a street or postal address or for collection at our office)
• a certified copy of one of your identity documents for verification (our administrative access policy (PDF, 51.0KB) has more information about this)

Please note that if a document contains the personal or commercial information of more than one person, the information will only be accessible through administrative access when all parties have given prior written consent.

If you have any questions about how to request administrative access to documents, please contact us.

Accessing information under the IP Act and RTI Act

If the documents you want only contain your own personal information, you can make an Information privacy application. There is no application fee and there are no processing charges under the IP Act, although we may need to charge a fee to reproduce or provide access to some information.

If you want to apply for documents that contain non-personal information, you can make a Right to information application. There is an initial application fee of $55.75. There may also be processing and access charges.

To request the documents, you can apply online or by contacting Right to Information Services.

Right to Information Services
GPO Box 2454
Brisbane  QLD  4001
Phone: (07) 3330 6111

Timeframes

Valid applications must be processed within 25 business days of receipt. A further 10 business days can be added if we need to consult with third parties.

The department may negotiate a further extension of time with the applicant if additional processing time is required. This extension of time does not affect an applicant's right of review.

Amending personal information

If you believe your personal information held by us is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or misleading, you can apply to have it amended by completing the Information privacy personal information amendment application form.

You can lodge your application form by email or by post.

Right of review

If you are dissatisfied with our decision regarding your request for information, you can apply to have that decision internally reviewed by another equal or higher-level officer.

Alternatively, you may apply for an external review direct to the Office of the Information Commissioner, irrespective of whether we have internally reviewed the decision.

An application to have a decision internally reviewed must be made within 20 business days of the date of the letter communicating the original decision. If you remain dissatisfied with our internal review decision, you may still request an external review by the Information Commissioner.

For external review, you must apply in writing to the Information Commissioner within 20 business days of the date of the internal review decision, or within 20 business days of the original decision if you choose to proceed directly to external review.

Contact us

For more information please contact us.