Freedom of Information and requests for personal information

You have a right to request access to your personal information, and we want to make it easy for you to do so. The information you would like access to may be on your MyPost account, or easily accessible by contacting our customer services team. If you can’t find what you’re after, you can contact us via our details below. Once we receive your request, and subject to relevant privacy laws, we will respond to your request within a reasonable time – usually within 30 days. We ask that you identify, as clearly as possible, the type/s of information requested. In some cases, we may need to verify your identity before we share information with you.

To access your personal information you can:

Write to us:
Australia Post Group
Privacy Contact Officer
GPO Box 1777
Melbourne Vic 3000

Call our Customer Contact Centre on 13 POST (13 76 78) between 9am and 5pm EST Monday to Friday.

Exceptions

Your right to access your personal information is not absolute. In some circumstances, the law permits us to refuse your request to provide you with access to your personal information. For example, where giving access to your information would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals, or would pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any individual, or to public health or public safety.

We’re committed to maintaining your trust by protecting your privacy, keeping you informed about how we handle your personal information and keeping your personal information safe and secure. For more information visit our privacy statement.

Current and former employees can obtain access to their employment record by contacting the Employee Advisory Team.

Please note:

• the retrieval of records can take up to 4 weeks
• section 15A of the FOI Act requires you to use this procedure before making a request under the FOI Act. You may make an FOI request after 30 days if you are not satisfied with our response.

If the matter relates to workers compensation information, please contact your claims manager or APIMC@auspost.com.au.

Medical checks

If you applied to become an Australia Post employee but were unsuccessful, please contact Pre Employment Services, for details about medical check components of your application, held by Australia Post.

Other information

If you applied to become an Australia Post employee and are seeking general information about your application, please contact External Recruitment, for information held by Australia Post.

Your request must:

• be in writing
• 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 we can process your request
• provide an address for reply.

Send your request to:

Freedom of Information Officer
Legal Department
Australia Post Headquarters
GPO Box 1777
MELBOURNE VIC 3001

Or, by email

If you’re 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 that person.

If your request is unclear or too general, you may be asked to re-submit your application. We'll confirm what further information is required.

If you require assistance with your request, please contact the FOI Contact Officer using the contact details listed above.

We’ll contact you within 14 days of receiving your request, to confirm we’ve received it and to provide you with an estimate of charges that apply to your request. You’ll receive our decision within 30 days, unless the length of time has been extended. If a document contains information about a third party, we’ll need to consult with them and may need to extend our decision time 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

Once we’ve made a decision about your FOI request, we’ll 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 our agency. 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’re 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’re unhappy with the way we’ve 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, please note, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Information Commissioner will consult to avoid the same matter being investigated twice.

We have an exemption under section 7 of the FOI Act from releasing documents relating to our 'commercial activities'. One example of a 'commercial activity' would be an activity carried on in competition with private entities.

Any requests for documents that concern our 'commercial activities' will be reviewed in accordance with the provisions of the FOI Act. If deemed to be exempt, access won't be granted and we'll let you know the reasons for our decision.

As required by the FOI Act, we have an Information Publication Scheme that provides information on our structure, functions, appointments, annual reports, consultation arrangements, FOI officer, information we routinely release following FOI requests, and information we routinely provide to Parliament.

Despite our 'commercial activities' exemption, we've adopted a pro-disclosure approach, and aim, wherever possible, to proactively make information about our business and related activities available to the public.

Information is grouped and accessible through the following categories.

Who we are

Information about our organisation, its structure and governance and our senior management team.

• Organisational structure information is contained in our Annual Reports
• Our corporate governance
• Our governance framework is also described in our Annual Reports
• Board member profiles

What we do

Information relating to our functions and services, including our decision making powers.

• Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989
• Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act)
• Australian Postal Corporation (Performance Standards) Regulations 1998
• Governance Arrangements for Commonwealth Government Business Enterprises
• Terms & conditions
  
• Refund policy
• Overview of our policies
• Our customer service charter

Our annual reports

Copies of our current and previous annual reports.

• Australia Post annual reports