We are committed to providing open and transparent access to information about our services and activities.
The Right to Information Act 2009 (RTI Act) and the Information Privacy Act 2009 (IP Act) aim to make more information available, provide equal access to information across all sectors of the community, and provide appropriate protection for individuals’ privacy.
The right to information gives you the right to access and amend information held by public sector agencies in Queensland, unless there is a good reason for it not to be provided. You have a right to access your personal information held by government under the RTI Act.
Government information should, where possible, be available through informal means, like on our website or in our publication scheme, or administratively released on request. A formal application for government-held information under the RTI or IP Acts should only be made as a last resort.
Before Making An Application
Think about the type of information you want and then see if the information is already part of our publicly available information, publication scheme or on the RTI applications disclosure log. Publication schemes detail what information is already publicly available including financial information, services, decisions, policies and priorities.
Contact us if the information you want is not available online. Provide as much detail about the information required and ask if the information can be accessed through one of our administrative access schemes. This means you may be provided the information without the need for a formal application.
Formal Applications
If you cannot access the information, you can submit a formal application under the RTI or IP Acts. If you would like documents that do not contain your personal information, you will need to apply under the RTI Act. If you are seeking documents that contain your personal information, then apply under the IP Act. Application forms are available from our customer service centres, Right to Information and Privacy and Office of the Information Commissioner.
You will need to provide evidence of identity when making the application. Types of proof include a certified copy of your driver’s licence, passport or birth certificate. If you are acting on someone’s behalf, you must provide evidence of both identities as well as sufficient proof of your authorisation to act on the person’s behalf.
Fees
Making an application for documents containing your personal information is free, if provided electronically.
RTI Act applications have a fee and additional charges may apply for processing the application and accessing documents e.g. searching and photocopying. A charges estimate notice will be provided if your application will take more than five hours to process. If you hold a concession card you can apply for a waiver of processing and access charges. The application fee can’t be waived.
Timeframes
Applications are generally processed within 25 working days, but this may be extended in some circumstances.
Under the IP Act you may apply for an amendment to a document that contains your personal information, if the document contains information that is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or misleading. An amendment is not required for changes of name, address etc.
To request an amendment complete the Personal Information Amendment Application Form and email it to us.
Our Disclosure Log provides details of documents released in response to RTI applications, where they do not contain the applicant’s personal information. It contains a description of the information released and, where possible, a link to the relevant documents. Contact us if you would like access to any of the documents listed in the disclosure log.
Under the RTI Act we are required to provide a publication scheme — a list of information that is available to the community.
The information we make available through the publication scheme will not generally include information that is:
- prevented by law from disclosure or is exempt under the RTI Act
- in draft form
- no longer readily available as it is contained in archives or is difficult to access for similar reasons.
The information in the publication scheme is grouped into seven classes.
About Us
Our Services
Our Finances
Our Priorities
- Corporate Plan
- Community information
- Economic development
- Environment and sustainability
- Facilities
- Sport and recreation
Our Decisions
- Advisory committees
- Community engagement and public consultation
- Council meeting agendas
- Council meeting minutes
Our Policies
Our Lists
We are requied under the Local Government (Operations) Regulation 2010 to maintain the following registers of interest.
A sample of our public registers available for inspection are:
The Office of the Information Commissioner (the office) has a responsibility under Chapter 5 of the IP Act to administer privacy complaints made against government agencies. The Office of the Information Commissioners Privacy Complaint Handling Policy outlines how the office deals with this kind of complaints.