Find a full copy of the RTI Act 2009 PDF by click­ing here RTI_ACT_2009.PDF

Information Access application

Access applications under the Right to Information Act 2009 and Information Privacy Act 2009

The Right to Infor­ma­tion Act 2009 (the RTI Act) and the Infor­ma­tion Pri­va­cy Act 2009 (the IP Act) give a right of access to infor­ma­tion held by gov­ern­ment, unless, on bal­ance it would be con­trary to the pub­lic inter­est to dis­close the infor­ma­tion.

Before mak­ing a for­mal appli­ca­tion, you should con­tact the rel­e­vant agency as infor­ma­tion may be already avail­able online, for pur­chase or by request.  Queens­land Gov­ern­ment agen­cies release infor­ma­tion admin­is­tra­tive­ly and proac­tive­ly wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.

If the infor­ma­tion you are seek­ing is not avail­able admin­is­tra­tive­ly, you may wish to make a for­mal appli­ca­tion. You can apply online for access under the RTI Act or IP Act to infor­ma­tion held by Queens­land Gov­ern­ment depart­ments, agen­cies and Min­is­ters.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can down­load the appli­ca­tion form and sub­mit your appli­ca­tion by post, fax or email or in per­son. Find the details of the rel­e­vant agency which you’re apply­ing to on our con­tacts page, as these are not includ­ed on the appli­ca­tion form.

Cred­it card pay­ments are accept­ed as part of the online appli­ca­tion process. Cred­it card details are not accept­ed for pay­ment of the appli­ca­tion fee by email, fac­sim­i­le or tele­phone. Please con­firm with the agency you are apply­ing to how you should pay your appli­ca­tion fee.

You will need to sub­mit your appli­ca­tion by down­load­ing the appli­ca­tion form if you wish to apply to Queens­land agen­cies oth­er than Gov­ern­ment depart­ments or Min­is­ters.

Pro­vid­ing as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble about the doc­u­ments you are seek­ing helps the Gov­ern­ment depart­ment, agency or Minister’s Office iden­ti­fy the doc­u­ments you are seek­ing more effi­cient­ly. If you know the title, sub­ject mat­ter, agency ref­er­ence num­ber, type of doc­u­ment or the date it was pro­duced, please spec­i­fy these details in your appli­ca­tion.

Fees and charges apply in vary­ing cir­cum­stances. View applic­a­ble fees and charges here.

Once you’ve accessed your per­son­al infor­ma­tion, you can also apply to amend your per­son­al infor­ma­tion under the IP Act if you believe the infor­ma­tion is inac­cu­rate, incom­plete, out of date or mis­lead­ing.

Fees and charges

Fees and charges for appli­ca­tions made under the Right to Infor­ma­tion Act 2009 (the RTI Act) are set out in the Right to Infor­ma­tion Reg­u­la­tion 2009. Charges under the Infor­ma­tion Pri­va­cy Act 2009 (the IP Act) are set out in the Infor­ma­tion Pri­va­cy Reg­u­la­tion 2009. The Office of the Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er pub­lish­es a detailed guide­line on fees and charges.

The appli­ca­tion fees and charges typ­i­cal­ly increase on 1 July each year. On 1 July 2024 the fees and charges were indexed by 0% (i.e. remain unchanged from 2023–24) in line with the government’s index­a­tion pol­i­cy. You can con­tact us to find out details about spe­cif­ic fees, charges or prices.

Below is a sum­ma­ry of the RTI appli­ca­tion fee and charges for RTI and IP appli­ca­tions, cur­rent from 1 July 2023.

Right to Infor­ma­tion

The cur­rent appli­ca­tion fee for an appli­ca­tion under the RTI Act is – $55.75. This fee can­not be waived.

An agency or Min­is­ter may impose pro­cess­ing charges on search­ing for or retriev­ing doc­u­ments, and mak­ing, or doing things relat­ed to mak­ing, a deci­sion about an appli­ca­tion. An agency or Min­is­ter may also impose access charges for pro­vid­ing the doc­u­ments.

The pro­cess­ing charges for an RTI appli­ca­tion are:

• if the agency or Min­is­ter spends less than 5 hours – nil
• if the agency or Min­is­ter spends more than 5 hours pro­cess­ing the appli­ca­tion — $8.65 per 15 min­utes or part of 15 min­utes.

If the agency spends more than 5 hours pro­cess­ing an appli­ca­tion, the pro­cess­ing charge applies to every hour. So, if pro­cess­ing takes 6 hours, the pro­cess­ing charge applies to the 6 hours.

The access charges for RTI appli­ca­tions are:

• for copies of doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed as a black and white A4 pho­to­copy — $0.25 per page.

Depend­ing on the appli­ca­tion, access charges may also include:

• the actu­al cost incurred to engage anoth­er enti­ty to search for and retrieve a doc­u­ment;
• the actu­al cost of relo­cat­ing a doc­u­ment (for exam­ple, the cost of trans­port­ing the doc­u­ment from Cairns to Bris­bane to give access to an appli­cant who lives in Bris­bane); and
• the actu­al cost of tran­scrib­ing a record­ing or prepar­ing a writ­ten doc­u­ment.

There are no access charges if doc­u­ments are pro­vid­ed by email or on CD.

The agency or Min­is­ter will give you a writ­ten esti­mate (called a charges esti­mate notice) of how much your appli­ca­tion is like­ly to cost.

Infor­ma­tion Pri­va­cy

There is no appli­ca­tion fee for an appli­ca­tion under IP Act, but there may be access charges.

The access charges for IP appli­ca­tions are:

• for copies of doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed as a black and white A4 pho­to­copy — $0.25 per page

Depend­ing on the appli­ca­tion, access charges may also include:

• the actu­al cost incurred to engage anoth­er enti­ty to search for and retrieve the doc­u­ment;
• the actu­al cost of relo­cat­ing a doc­u­ment (for exam­ple, the cost of trans­port­ing the doc­u­ment from Cairns to Bris­bane to give access to an appli­cant who lives in Bris­bane); and
• the actu­al cost of tran­scrib­ing a record­ing or prepar­ing a writ­ten doc­u­ment.

There are no access charges if doc­u­ments are pro­vid­ed by email or on CD.

Waiv­er of charges

Pro­cess­ing and/or access charges may be waived if:

• the agency or Min­is­ter con­sid­ers the like­ly asso­ci­at­ed costs would be more than the like­ly amount of the charge;
• an appli­cant is in finan­cial hard­ship (ie holds a spec­i­fied valid con­ces­sion card); or
• the appli­cant is a non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion and the Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er has decid­ed the organ­i­sa­tion is in finan­cial hard­ship.

Pay­ment by cred­it card

Cred­it card pay­ments are accept­ed as part of an online appli­ca­tion process. Cred­it card details are not accept­ed for pay­ment of the appli­ca­tion fee via email, fac­sim­i­le or tele­phone.  Please con­firm the pre­ferred pay­ment method with the agency you are apply­ing to.

Pay­ment by cheque

If you are pay­ing by cheque, you should make the cheque payable to the agency to which you are apply­ing and post to that agency. Con­tact details for Queens­land gov­ern­ment agen­cies are avail­able here. Con­tact the agency you are apply­ing to before sub­mit­ting your appli­ca­tion to check whether that agency accepts pay­ments by cheque.

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