Right to Information in Tasmania: RTI Applications, Fees and the Ombudsman Review

Tasmania's Right to Information Act 2009 gives every person a legally enforceable right to information held by a public authority, but the Act itself treats a formal application as the method of last resort behind routine and active release, and it caps the application fee at $49.00 for 2026-27 with a 20-working-day decision clock.

For how this fits alongside the other eight Australian regimes, see freedom of information in Australia.

Who Decides, and Under Which Act

Tasmania's regime is the Right to Information Act 2009 (Tas), No. 70 of 2009, which commenced on 1 July 2010 and replaced the earlier Freedom of Information Act 1991. Section 7 gives every person "a legally enforceable right to be provided, in accordance with this Act, with information in the possession of a public authority or a Minister unless the information is exempt information."

There is no central commissioner deciding applications. Each public authority, meaning an Agency under the State Service Act 2000, the University of Tasmania, Tasmania Police, a council, a statutory authority, a Government Business Enterprise, or a similarly established public body, decides its own applications. Ministers are covered separately under the Act's application provisions.

Section 6(1) excludes a specific list of office-holders and bodies from the Act entirely, unless the information relates to the administration of the relevant office rather than its core function: the Governor, a court, a tribunal, the Integrity Commission, a judge, an associate judge, a magistrate, the Solicitor-General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the State Litigator, the Ombudsman, the Custodial Inspector, the Auditor-General, the Legal Profession Board, the Parole Board, the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, the Commissioner for Children and Young People, the Public Guardian, the Health Complaints Commissioner, the Implementation Monitor, Parliament, and a Member of Parliament. Court and tribunal records held for a judicial or quasi-judicial function are outside the Act's reach; see court records in Tasmania for how to get those instead.

Informal Release Comes First: the Push Model

Section 12 sets Tasmania apart from a purely request-and-decide model. It defines four disclosure types: required disclosure, meaning a release the Act or another law compels; routine disclosure, meaning material a public authority decides on its own may interest the public; active disclosure, meaning a release made in response to an informal request made outside the formal application process; and assessed disclosure, meaning the formal, fee-paying application under section 13.

Section 12(3) states that "assessed disclosure is the method of disclosure of last resort," and it requires the principal officer of each public authority to have processes in place to make active, routine or required disclosure happen before a reader is pushed toward a formal application. Section 12(3)(c) even lets an authority refuse a formal application where the information is already available, or will become available as a routine or required disclosure within 12 months.

In practice, this means the first step for a Tasmanian government record is to ask the relevant authority directly, or check whether it is already published, before lodging a formal RTI application under section 13.

How to Make a Valid Application

A formal application, called an assessed disclosure application, goes to the public authority or Minister believed to hold the information, under section 13. Section 13(3) requires it to contain the minimum information prescribed by the Right to Information Regulations 2021 (SR 2021, No. 36), regulation 5:

• The applicant's name.
• A postal or email address for correspondence, and contact details during business hours.
• The general subject matter of the information sought.
• Details of the information sought, including relevant dates or periods if known.
• Details of any efforts already made to obtain the information from sources already public.
• The date the application was signed.
• If the application includes the applicant's own personal information, proof of identity, meaning a certified birth certificate or extract, a citizenship or nationality certificate, a passport, or an Australian driver licence.

An application can be made "by reference to the information contained in a particular record or document without specifying the subject matter," under section 13(4), and section 13(6) to (8) requires the authority to help a person make a compliant application and to give general details of what it holds if asked. A misdirected application must be promptly transferred to the correct authority under section 14. Under section 16(3), the fee must be paid, or a waiver decided, before the application is accepted.

Fees

Tasmania's application fee is a single flat charge under section 16, and the Act does not carve out a free category for requests about the applicant's own personal information, unlike some other Australian jurisdictions. The same section applies the flat fee regardless of whether the request is for personal or other information; the only relief available is a section 16(2) waiver.

Section 16 does not set out any separate hourly search or processing charge beyond the flat application fee, and none was found in the Right to Information Regulations 2021 in researching this page. Whether Tasmania applies any processing charge on top of the flat fee in practice was not fully confirmed for this page, so this should be treated as an open question rather than a stated absence.

How Long It Takes

A public authority has 20 working days after accepting an application to decide, under section 15(1). Section 15(3) defines acceptance as the day the application is received, or the day negotiations to refine or redirect it are completed, whichever applies.

Negotiations to clarify or redirect an application must be completed within 10 working days of receipt, under sections 13(7) and 15(2). The decision period can extend beyond 20 working days by agreement with the applicant under section 15(4)(a); by the Ombudsman's approval, on the authority's own application, where agreement cannot be reached and the request is complex or voluminous, under section 15(4)(b); or automatically by a further 20 working days where a third party is consulted about their own personal information under section 36 or their business affairs under section 37, under section 15(5). If a consulted third party does not respond within 15 working days, the authority may decide without their input under section 15(6).

There is no section labelled "deemed refusal," but section 46 achieves the same effect: if the 20-working-day period, as extended, passes with no decision notified, the principal officer or Minister "is... taken to have made, on the last day of the relevant period, a decision refusing to grant the application." That deemed refusal is what allows the applicant to apply to the Ombudsman under section 45.

What You Cannot Get

Part 3 of the Act splits exemptions into two groups.

Division 1 (sections 25 to 32) sets out exemptions with no public interest test: Executive Council information, Cabinet information, internal ministerial briefing material, information not relating to official business, national or state security and defence and international relations information, law-enforcement information, information subject to legal professional privilege, and information about closed council meetings.

Cabinet information under section 26 has a distinctive feature: it ceases to be exempt 10 years after it was first considered by Cabinet, under section 26(2).

Division 2 (sections 33 to 42) sets out exemptions subject to a public interest test, applied under section 33: communications from other jurisdictions, internal deliberative information, personal information of someone other than the applicant, business affairs of a third party, business affairs of the public authority itself, information obtained in confidence, negotiation procedures and criteria, information affecting the State's economy, and cultural, heritage or natural resource information.

Personal information about a third party (section 36) and business affairs of a third party (section 37) each trigger a mandatory consultation and notice process with the affected person, feeding into the 20-working-day extension described above.

If Refused: the Review Ladder

Tasmania's review path has two steps, and no tribunal.

Internal review (section 43). An applicant can ask the principal officer to review a decision within 20 working days of the decision notice. The principal officer must review the decision as soon as practicable, either personally or by delegating to a different officer, and issue a fresh decision.

External review to the Ombudsman (sections 44 to 48). The Ombudsman is the only external review body. An application goes to the Ombudsman within 20 working days of the internal review outcome, or after 15 working days of internal-review silence, under section 44. Section 45 sets out direct-to-Ombudsman routes that bypass internal review entirely, including where a Minister made the original decision, where the authority says the information does not exist, where access was given in a different form than requested, or a complaint about the adequacy of a search. Section 46's deemed refusal also opens a path to the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman can examine witnesses, direct that a decision be made, direct an internal review, seek conciliation, decline a vexatious or unsubstantial application, direct better reasons within 10 working days, and direct implementation of a decision within 20 working days, under section 47. The public authority carries the onus of showing information should not be disclosed, under section 47(4); a third party objecting to disclosure carries the opposite onus, under section 47(5). The Ombudsman, not the applicant, may apply to the Supreme Court on a question of law, under section 47(2)(b); this is the only path toward a court, and it is the Ombudsman's discretion to use, not a right the applicant can invoke directly on the merits. Under section 48, a finalised Ombudsman decision can only be reconsidered to correct an accidental mistake or omission.

Correcting Your Own Records

The Right to Information Act 2009 has no correction or amendment provision of its own. Correcting personal information runs instead through the Personal Information Protection Act 2004, Part 3A (sections 17A to 17I).

Under section 17A, a person may request an amendment of personal information held by a personal information custodian if it is incorrect, incomplete, out of date or misleading. Section 17B requires the request to be in writing, addressed to the custodian, with a reply address, particulars of the alleged defect, and the requested amendment. The custodian may either alter the record or add a notation recording the alleged defect and, where the information is said to be out of date, what the current information is, under sections 17C and 17D. A decision notice is due "as soon as practicable but in any case not later than" 20 working days after the request, under section 17E, the same clock length as an RTI decision, though under a different Act.

Proactive Disclosure

Tasmania has no disclosure log requiring authorities to publish a record of each formal application and its outcome. Proactive release instead runs through the routine disclosure and required disclosure categories defined in section 5 and enabled by section 12, described above: authorities decide for themselves what may interest the public and publish it. The one statutory publication duty found in researching this page is section 53, which requires an annual administration report covering applications received, refused, exempt, and taken to internal and external review, from the Secretary of the administering department (currently the Department of Justice), as a single consolidated statewide report.

What This Act Is Not the Route For

A Right to Information application is not the way to get a court file or a document from a court's own judicial functions; courts are excluded under section 6(1) except for their administrative records. See court records in Tasmania for that separate process.

It is also not the way to see your own hospital medical record, which runs through Tasmania's health-records access rules rather than a formal RTI application in most cases. See medical records in Tasmania.

A land title search or a strata record is not covered by RTI either; see property records in Australia and strata law in Australia for those separate registries.