Plain language law

New Zealand law explained for everyone

Official Information Act 1982

Requests for access to official information

18B: Duty to consider consulting person if request likely to be refused under section 18(e) or (f)

You could also call this:

"Agencies must consider discussing your request with you before refusing it under certain rules."

If you ask for official information and it is likely to be refused under section 18(e) or (f), the department or organisation must think about talking to you before saying no. They need to consider if talking to you would help you change your request so they can say yes. This means they have to think about whether consulting with you would help remove the reason for refusing your request.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

This page was last updated on

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM65606.

Topics:
Rights and equality > PrivacyGovernment and voting > Government departments
Previous

18A: Requests involving substantial collation or research, or

"Asking for information that's hard to find or needs a lot of research"

Next

19: Reason for refusal to be given, or

"When official information is refused, you are told why it was refused and can ask for it to be checked."

Part 2Requests for access to official information

18BDuty to consider consulting person if request likely to be refused under section 18(e) or (f)

  1. If a request is likely to be refused under section 18(e) or (f), the department or interdepartmental venture, Minister of the Crown, or organisation must, before that request is refused, consider whether consulting with the person who made the request would assist that person to make the request in a form that would remove the reason for the refusal.

Notes
  • Section 18B: inserted, on , by section 3 of the Official Information Amendment Act 2003 (2003 No 90).
  • Section 18B: amended, on , by section 135 of the Public Service Act 2020 (2020 No 40).