Dear Ministry of Transport,

A decision has been made by Cabinet, so therefore it is time to release the report(s) prepared by Auckland Light Rail regarding the feedback they received. As their website states under the "Your Views" tab "The team used all feedback received to create an engagement summary" so at least one report exists. Though, I concede, you may not have it. In which case, who does?

Yours faithfully,

William Oosterman

Dear Official Correspondence,

In the original response to which I refer, I was advised to email Ministerial Services. The site I have used to conduct this OIA request, i.e. fyi.org.nz, has suppressed the email (or hidden it from my inexpert eyes) that was mentioned. As a result, I have just selected the "reply" option.

On 17 December 2021, I made a request for "the report(s) prepared by Auckland Light Rail regarding the feedback they received". In particular, I appealed to the following line on the ALR website "The team used all feedback received to create an engagement summary" as evidence for the existence of what I was requesting.

On 21 December I received a reply refusing this request, the key bits being contained in the following paragraph:

"I am refusing your request under section 18(d) of the Act as the information wil [sic] soon be made publicly available. The engagement summary of public feedback is part of the Indicative Business Case, which is set to be publicly released once an announcement is made on next steps for the Light Rail project in early 2022. In the meantime, I refer you to the summary report on the Auckland Light Rail website which contains an engagement summary. This can be found at [link]"

I would note at this stage that this Indicative Business Case (IBC) was not made public within a time frame that any reasonable person would consider "soon", ultimately being released on or around 1 February 2022, well over a month later. It might be argued that "soon" was with reference to the Ombudsman's Calendar, which said that I would get a reply before 8 February 2022. It is now later than that. Which is important because I didn't want to see the IBC itself; I wanted to see any and all report/s made as a result of the public engagement process.

Setting aside the question of "soon", when the IBC was eventually released the Resources page on the ALR website said "The IBC appendices will shortly be available and posted online". This is directly relevant to my OIA because the IBC itself contains a reference to "Appendix 34 Public engagement summary", i.e. (at least some of) what I asked for. You can view the page as I refer to it via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/202202011951...

The pdf IBC still contains a reference to Appendix 34 (and more than thirty other appendices too, of course), for completeness.

I would additionally note that "shortly" implies an even shorter time period than "soon" so I do not think waiting "only" a fortnight is impatient.

In any case, today I decided to check in on the Resources Page to see if the Appendices had been posted online, as promised both in the initial OIA and on the Resources Page itself. To my horror, not only was the appendix not there but nor was the promise! You can see this in the below image:

https://i.imgur.com/2Wr6V94.png

And possibly by visiting the Resources page yourself:

https://www.lightrail.co.nz/light-rail/r...

But it may have been updated (again) by the time you get around to this (let us hope such an update was to publish all the appendices).

So, it stands thus... nearly two months since the original request was answered with a statement saying the material I wanted would be published in a timely fashion anyway, the material is still not in the public eye. This is not "soon". This is not "shortly". Therefore, I ask three things:

(1) Where is Appendix 34?

(2) Why has it not been publicly posted as indicated?

(3) Is Appendix 34 the only non public report on the Auckland Light Rail engagement process?

I like to think that I am a patient person, but it has been nearly two months and I am growing frustrated. And, honestly, I don't think I am alone in this (wrt the appendices) as, for example, Greater Auckland recently wrote:

"Following the release of the government’s decision on Light Rail two weeks ago, the Auckland Light Rail team (ALR) released the Indicative Business Case (IBC) used to make the decision and although some of what are probably the most interesting parts of it are redacted, and they still haven’t published the appendices, there is some useful information in it."

https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2022/...

Obviously, ALR should have posted all of the Appendices by now but my driving concern is for the Public Engagement Summary.

Regards,

William Oosterman

Dear Official Correspondence,

Thank you for your prompt reply, however there are still two unresolved matters.

Firstly, what does "next few weeks" mean in this context? Clearly, this could have a quite different meaning in the context of an OIA request to its mundane one.

Secondly, is Appendix 34 the only report based on the public engagement process?

Yours gratefully,

William Oosterman