Email of 3 December 2009 to the Adviser of the Prime Minister’s Department

Dear Mr Anagnostis,

Thanks for your long email of 19 November. You repeated what were said previously, but did not respond to my points in my emails.

The documents I want at this stage are:

1. ‘The Guidlines in place for dealing with correspondence’ on behalf of the Prime Minister. (Thank you for summurizing the Guidelines, but I want the original documents. It can be electronic copy. It will waste paper and postage to send the hardcopy. Actually, if it is possible, I want all the documents’ electronic copies.)

2. A complete list of the documents relating to the correspondences of
(1) my letters of:
(i) 9 September 2008, and
(ii) 1 January 2009, and
(iii) 8 May 2009,
(2) Ms Rebecca Irwin’s letter of 16 December 2008,
(3) Ms Sarah Adams’s letter of 23 Feb 2009.

3. All documents on the above list.

4. The decisions should be included in the documets in 3 above, but for clarification they are listed seperately below:

(1) the decisions and reasons in relation to my letter of 9 September 2008 and 1 January 2009—the ‘subject matter[s] that warrants a response, but not from the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister’,

(2) the decision and reasons in relation to not to respond to my letter of 8 May 2009 except the FOI inquiry in the letter.

5. The document relied on by Ms Irwin to state: ‘the Hon Philip Ruddock MP, informed you on 26 September 2006 of his decision not to intervene in your case, as no constitutional issues had been identified’ (par 5 of Ms Irwin’s letter of 16 December 2008 and par 13 of my letter of 1 January 2009).

With identical request, the LP Branch dislosed documents, but the PMO needed clarification

Your refer to Ms Mckivat’s letter to me of 24 April 2009, she listed my requests, which were substantially identical to the request in my letter of 8 May 2009. The PMD’s LP branch made a search and disclose the documents it held; on the contrary you kept insisting: ‘what specific information or documents you were seeking’.

You asserted: ‘The response you received from Ms Irwin and Ms Adams appear consistent with these guidelines as your letters contained a complaint about a Department response and, in relation to your letter of 1 January, followed previous correspondence from Ms Irwin’.

In my opinion:
· ‘a complaint about a Department response’ means ‘a line’ Department other than the Prime Minister’s Department, (Furthermore, I stated in my letter of 9 September 2008: ‘Mr Anderson has tried to clarify the issues in his capacity’, and ‘Mr Anderson has failed to bring this matter to your attention and has not let you decide what thing can be done’. According to the documents disclosed with Ms Mckivat’s letter to me of 24 April 2009, Mr Anderson did try to bring the issue to the Prime Minister’s attention, but MCU disalowed him to do it.)
· ‘where a PMO staff member has previously signed a reply on the subject matter’ means the same member should sign the second letter again, not another member;
therefore, I need to look at the original guildlines not the summary or interpretation.

Why the PMO replied to my letters but not more closely connected with these activites than the PMD?

You refer to ss 16(1)(b) of the FOI Act. On face of it the PMO replied to my letters and ought to be more closely connected with these activities than the PMD. I could not understand your logic. Could you please explain your logic?

The Rudd Government has done nothing to undo the damage caused by the case law in terms of protecting ‘employees who are given apparently unlawful directions by their employers in the workplace’ from retaliatory dismissals

I wanted the constitutional problem to be solved, not ‘a personal response from the Prime Minister. As outlined in my letters mentioned above:
· Mr Anderson held the case law is ‘incorrect’ and Ms Irwin held the case law ‘relates to the protection of employees who are given apparently unlawful directions by their employers in the workplace’, but both of them expressed to the effect that nothing could be done.
· the Prime Minister stated: ‘The failures that we have seen in recent times do not lie in the institutions alone. The failure lies more in the poverty of our political will to animate these institutions to dischage the purposes for which they were created’.
The government repeatedly asserted: ‘The Rudd Government has no tolerance for conduct which breaks the law’. However the situation is that bad employers’ apparently unlawfufl directions are enforceable in accordance with the ‘incorrect’ case law. Given above information, I cannot agree with you that my correspondence had received ‘appropriate consideration’. Given what the Prime Minister appealled for, I want the Prime Minister to know the damage caused by the case law.

Please kindly confirm on receiving this email and indicate when I will get a response.

I look forward to receiving your reply.

Enclosures:

Mr Angelo Anagnostis’s email of 19 November 2009