Author Archives: Ben Fairless

Our Submission: Changes to Part 3 of the FOI Guidelines

By Ben Fairless | Published: June 24, 2025

We have made a submission to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), who were consulting on changes they proposed to make to Part 3 — Processing and deciding FOI requests of their FOI Guidelines. The FOI Guidelines are detail how the Information Commissioner expects authorities to handle FOI requests. We’ve shared our feedback […]

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Why you can’t request external reviews via Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: May 29, 2025

We’ve recently updated the page for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, also known as the OAIC, to make it clear people can’t use Right to Know to make FOI review applications. We’ve done this after seeing an increase in the number of external review requests and complaints being made via Right to Know. […]

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How we deal with moderation on Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: November 4, 2020

There have recently been a few articles published in The Guardian about a request on Right to Know that we were asked to moderate. As one of the volunteers who spends the most time looking after Right to Know, I wanted to explain what happened in this case and explain how we moderate requests on […]

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A great win for Right to Know, FOI and transparency

By Ben Fairless | Published: May 11, 2017

Ben Fairless is a volunteer administrator of our Freedom of Information (FOI) request site, Right To Know. When the ATO started to refuse valid FOI requests from people on Right To Know he made a personal complaint to the OAIC about his refused request. He has some good news to share! You may have been […]

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Right To Know is now in the ACT

By Ben Fairless | Published: April 13, 2015

Right To Know, our Freedom of Information project, already makes requesting information under FOI super easy. So far you’ve only been able to request information from the Federal Government but now you’re also able to request information from the ACT Government using Right to Know. This change is great for people who are interested in the goings on […]

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How to find what you’re looking for on Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: January 20, 2015

Following on from some recent queries on Twitter, I thought it was a good idea to sit down and provide a guide on some of the ways you can keep in touch with a request on Right to Know. Right to Know is a simple, free service provided by the OpenAustralia Foundation that takes the […]

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