We are committed to providing access to information it holds, unless on the balance it is contrary to the public interest to provide that information.
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 to 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 under the Information Privacy Act 2009. You have a right to access personal and non-personal information held by government under the Right to Information Act 2009.
Before applying for information, you should first check to see if it is already available online. You can search our website for:
- routinely released information in our publication scheme
- information previously released through RTI applications in our disclosure log
- released Cabinet documents by date or topic.
- Information contained in our annual reports
If you cannot find what you are looking for, contact our Right to Information and Information Privacy Officer who will advise if the information is accessible through an informal release process, or if you will need to make a RTI or IP application to access it.
Informal requests
We can often give you access to non-sensitive information or your own personal information without needing a formal Right to Information (RTI) or Information Privacy (IP) access application. However this is discretionary and there are generally not the same rights of review that apply for RTI and IP applications.
Some examples of such documents are governance documents, annual reports and policies.
You can make an informal access request for information verbally or in writing by contacting us. Written requests do not need to be in a particular form and can be made in general correspondence.
You should give as much information as possible so the documents can be identified and located. You must also provide satisfactory evidence of identity before accessing the documents.
There is no charge for informal administrative releases of information unless there are a large number of documents. The QFCC may charge for photocopying or similar costs.
Requests under the RTI or IP Acts
If the information you wish to access is not already published or available through an informal request, you can make a formal application for access to your own personal information under the Information Privacy Act 2009 (IP Act), or information that is not exclusively your personal information under the Right to Information Act 2009 (RTI Act).
The RTI and IP Act give all members of the community the general right to access documents in the possession of the QFCC, unless on balance it is contrary to the public interest to provide that information. You can’t use this process to ask for answers to your questions.
If you are not sure which Act to apply under, just ask us and we can assist you.
RTI applications
You can make an RTI application for any information we hold. You need to apply under the RTI Act if you are requesting documents that contain information about other people, businesses or government activities. If your application contains both information about you and other people, businesses or government activities then you will need to make an RTI application. There is an application fee to make an application under the RTI Act, for details of fees and charges, see the Right to Information website.
IP applications
You can make an IP access application for documents that contain your personal information. There is no fee to make an application under the IP Act.
Information held by other Queensland government departments
If the information you want is held by another Queensland government department you can contact the relevant contact officer of that department. For more information about other Queensland government departments refer to the Right to Information website.
Information held by the Australian Government
If the information you want is held by the Australian Government you should contact the Australian Government, for further information see the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner Freedom of Information (FOI) website.
You can apply to amend documents containing your personal information you believe is inaccurate, misleading, out of date or incomplete. You need to have accessed the documents before you can apply to have them amended.