Dear Christopher Luxon,

Please provide all correspondence in relation to this request:

https://fyi.org.nz/request/30376-all-evi...

This request is intended to cover all commissioning, discussion about response etc. This would also include information which is known to an agency but has not yet been written down (so discussions between office staff). I am interested in why this took 21 days to respond to, when the information doesn't exist.

Yours faithfully,

Aaron W

Dear Sarah Boyle,

Thank for you passing this response through.

A couple of points of clarification please:

1) The OIA notes 'subject to section 17, the department or interdepartmental venture or Minister of the Crown or organisation shall make the information available in the way preferred by the person requesting it unless to do so would—(a) impair efficient administration; or (b) be contrary to any legal duty of the department or venture or Minister of the Crown or organisation in respect of the document; or (c) prejudice the interests protected by section 6 or section 7 or section 9 and (in the case of the interests protected by section 9) there is no countervailing public interest.'

In this case Mr Burrows notes: "preserve confidence in the free and frank consideration of decisions when processing responses to requests for official information. " This does not appear to be applicable to any of the reasons outlined in section 17. Could you please clarify? Currently the provision of the summary appears contrary to the OIA without this further explanation.

2) The response from Mr Burrows notes: This email was sent from PMO to DPMC on 9 April
2025 at 11.43am. The email noted that the original request was missed by the office and
asks for a quick turnaround in response. The email included advice as follows: “There is no
official information. The PM was responding to media queries following on from comments
made by NZ First.“ Given that this appears to be the totality of the message (and the totality of the initial reply from Mr Burrows noting that no information exists) there is a further question to be raised about why this email could not be provided in its original form, and exactly what prejudice the Prime Minister's Office believes would occur if it was to be released? I am interested as to why the Prime Minister's Office didn't supply the email it was happy to summarize with any redactions it considered necessary?

3) My request explicitly noted: This request is intended to cover all commissioning, discussion about
response etc. This would also include information which is known to an agency but has not yet been written down (so discussions between office staff).

The response notes: "Key staff in this office were able to confirm that no official information within scope of your request was held by this office." But no further information is provided, nor is any further explanation given about why there was not further information. I'd expect to see at least a summary of the conversation. This appears to be a deliberate omission of information that was clearly requested.

Thank you in advance for your time in clarifying these points. I look forward to hearing from you before considering further progression to the Ombudsman.

Yours sincerely,

Aaron W

Dear Sarah Boyle,

Thank you for providing such a quick clarification. However, I still have some questions:

You are correct that summaries can be provided but section 16(2) of the OIA notes that information must be provided in the format asked for but with a few exceptions. I had already asked for "all correspondence". Therefore, it was clear from the outset I was interested in a copy of the document. Providing a summary and then noting that I've "now" requested a copy appears to be a bit misleading, and also not in line with section 13 requirements relating to providing reasonable assistance.

In addition, there was no way for me to be clearer or more explicit in my earlier request as I had no idea as to what information you held. Again, there is a requirement to provide assistance to requesters.

Can you confirm that there is only two redactions made on the correspondence relating to privacy? You've noted section 9(2)(g)(i) but this doesn't appear on the document.

Finally, you've noted that "because there is no written record of the verbal interactions, it is not possible to provide a more fulsome version of these, beyond what was already provided in the summary."

Information that is known by an agency but not written down is still considered to be official information. In this instance this conversation was used as the basis to refuse the request. Therefore a lack of written record should not be a reason to not supply information. I would expect that at the very least, a summary would also include when and where this discussion took place, and who was involved in such discussion.

Thank you in advance for your time

Yours sincerely,

Aaron W