Australia
Freedom of Information Act 1982
Act No. 3 of 1982 (Cth)
The Commonwealth access law. Records more than 20 years old fall instead under the Archives Act 1983 open-access period — a free application to the National Archives of Australia.
The clock
30 calendar days
30 calendar days from receipt, extendable by 30 with the applicant's agreement or for third-party consultation.
Defence ceased investigating 'unidentified aerial sightings' in 1996; the older files sit at the National Archives of Australia and are cheaper to get there.
Reading the statute itself
The text of this one is not reproduced here: foreign legislation is published under its own country’s copyright rules, so it is linked instead. Everything on this page — the deadline, the appeal path, the fee standard — is Aletheca’s summary of that text, and the official source is one click away.
If they refuse
- Appeal deadline
- 60 days — days from the decision to seek Information Commissioner review
- Appeal route
- Internal review within 30 days or Information Commissioner (OAIC) review within 60, then the Administrative Review Tribunal.
- Litigation
- Administrative Review Tribunal after IC review.
Fees and expedition
Fee-waiver standard
No application fee; processing charges may be imposed and are routinely reduced or waived on public-interest grounds.
Aletheca argues this on every request it files here. A service that publishes every page it receives, free, to a public archive has an unusually strong showing — considerably stronger than a private requester’s.
Exemptions it allows
- s.33 National security and defence
- s.34 Cabinet documents
- s.37 Law enforcement
- s.42 Legal privilege
- s.47F Personal privacy
Quirks worth knowing
The 20-year open-access rule means the classic RAAF files are an NAA access application, not an FOI request — free, and outside the FOI clock entirely.