Letter of 17 November to the Commonwealth Ombudsman

Dear Professor John McMillan

I appreciate that you replied personally to my complaint of 26 September (Your ref: 2007-120702).

You didn’t deal with my ground of complaint. You didn’t even provide any reasons for not dealing with my ground─the Federal Court’s ruling of ‘implied waiver of privilege’ in Bennett v Australian Customs. It seems that you had problems to apply the Federal Court’s ruling; however, you didn’t want to tell me your problems. Is that correct?

You didn’t respond to any of my questions. If my questions were unreasonable, or illegitimate, I believe, you would have pointed out. Apparently, you chose to not respond to any of my questions. Were you happy with yourself, an ombudsman, without giving reasons, you didn’t answer any questions?

One of my questions is ‘whether the deleted information is part of the reasons for the decision that had been disclosed’. Implicitly, you held ‘the deleted information (‘a summary of the legal advice’, on which the decision in concern was based.) is part of the reasons for the decision that had been disclosed’. If you had held the deleted information isn’t part of the reasons for the decision that had been disclosed, you would have informed me that. Is that right?

You ‘assure[d] [me] that a proper investigation was conducted’; on the contrary, you didn’t assure me a proper or correct conclusion was made; you didn’t assure me the result of your investigation, in terms of ‘whether the deleted information is part of the reasons for the decision that had been disclosed’, is disclosed. Put another way, you knew, according to the result of your investigation, your conclusion was incorrect and improper.

Please disclose your investigation result. If you cannot disclose your investigation result, please provide reasons.

You didn’t deny that my ground is legitimate, but you stated your ‘office cannot take the issue any further’. You didn’t even mention ‘implied waiver’─that is my ground of complaint.

Your ‘role’ (and your office’s role) is to answer complainant’s question, disclose your investigation result, and directly respond to the ground of complaint. If I am wrong, please correct me.

If you can tell me what your problems are, why you cannot answer any of my questions, and why you cannot deal with my ground of complaint, your problems can be solved easier and faster.

In due course I will try to expose and solve your problems for the public and for you because the public may not accept that an ombudsman cannot obey the laws, cannot answer questions, and cannot provide any reasons for not answering questions.

Thanks for your courtesy to advise me that you will ‘read’ my ‘further correspondence on the same issue’.

(files below are downloadable as .jpg files)

The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s letter of 6 November p. 1 and p. 2