New Zealand
Official Information Act 1982
1982 No 156
New Zealand's access law, built on a 'principle of availability': information must be released unless a listed reason to withhold outweighs the public interest.
The clock
20 business days
As soon as reasonably practicable, and no later than 20 working days after receipt; extensions must be notified with reasons.
The NZDF answered the standing UFO question wholesale in December 2010 by declassifying its files, 1952–2009.
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
- Not specified
- Appeal route
- Complaint to the Ombudsman, whose final opinions agencies almost always follow; no internal-review tier is required first.
- Litigation
- Judicial review exists; in practice the Ombudsman resolves nearly everything.
Fees and expedition
Fee-waiver standard
Requests are normally free; charges are rare and must be reasonable.
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.6(a) Security and defence
- s.9(2)(a) Privacy
- s.9(2)(g) Free and frank opinion
Quirks worth knowing
A request needs no form and no magic words — the Act itself says a phone call is enough.