CHAPTER 2 | The organisation

History and establishment

The office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman commenced operation on 1 July 1977. Since then, seven Commonwealth Ombudsmen have been in office.

The office was established by the Ombudsman Act 1976 (Ombudsman Act), as part of a new and distinctive system of administrative law in Australia. The office is in the portfolio administered by the Prime Minister.

Over time the responsibilities of the Ombudsman have expanded to cover:

• complaints about the Australian Federal Police (AFP)—1981
• complaints about freedom of information—1982
• Defence Force Ombudsman role—1983
• compliance auditing of AFP and National Crime Authority (now Australian Crime Commission (ACC)) telecommunication intercept records—1988, with added responsibilities of monitoring controlled operations in 2001 and auditing of surveillance device records in 2004
• Australian Capital Territory Ombudsman—1989
• Taxation Ombudsman—1995
• assessing and reporting on the detention of long term (two years or more) immigration detainees—2005
• Immigration Ombudsman role—2005
• Commonwealth service providers—2005
• Postal Industry Ombudsman role—2006
• compliance auditing of access to stored communications by the AFP, ACC, Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI) and other enforcement agencies (such as the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and the Australian Customs Service), and the use of surveillance devices by state law enforcement agencies under Commonwealth legislation—2006
• Law Enforcement Ombudsman role, with a specific responsibility to review the adequacy and comprehensiveness of the AFP complaint-handling system—2006.

Chapter 8—Thirty years ... thirty changes describes some of the major developments in the office over the past thirty years.

click to open window containing large version of timeline (scroll left and right)

Role and functions

The office of Commonwealth Ombudsman exists to safeguard the community in its dealings with government agencies, and to ensure that administrative action by Australian Government agencies is fair and accountable. The Ombudsman has three major statutory roles:

• Complaint investigation: investigating and reviewing the administrative actions of Australian Government officials and agencies, upon receipt of complaints from members of the public, groups and organisations
• Own motion investigation: investigating, on the initiative or ‘own motion’ of the Ombudsman, the administrative actions of Australian Government agencies—often arising from insights gained from handling individual complaints
• Compliance auditing: inspecting the records of agencies such as the AFP and ACC, to ensure compliance with legislative requirements applying to selected law enforcement and regulatory activities.

The complaint and own motion investigation roles of the Ombudsman are the more traditional Ombudsman roles that constitute the bulk of the work of the office. The guiding principle in an Ombudsman investigation is whether the administrative action under investigation is unlawful, unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, improperly discriminatory, factually deficient, or otherwise wrong. At the conclusion of the investigation, the Ombudsman can recommend that corrective action be taken by an agency. This may occur either specifically in an individual case or more generally by a change to relevant legislation, administrative policies or procedures.

A key objective of the Ombudsman is to foster good public administration within Australian Government agencies, ensuring that the principles and practices of public administration are sensitive, responsive and adaptive to the interests of members of the public.

The role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman is principally performed under the Ombudsman Act. There are special procedures applying to complaints about AFP officers contained in the Australian Federal Police Act 1979. Complaints about the conduct of AFP officers prior to 2007 are dealt with under the Complaints (Australian Federal Police) Act 1981 (Cth). This Act was repealed on 30 December 2006 after the relevant provisions of the Law Enforcement (AFP Professional Standards and Related Measures) Act 2006 commenced.

’ A key objective of the Ombudsman is to foster good public administration ...’

The Commonwealth Ombudsman can consider complaints about almost all Australian Government departments and agencies and most contractors delivering services to the community for, or on behalf of, the Australian Government.

The Ombudsman Act also confers five specialist roles on the Ombudsman:

• Defence Force Ombudsman—handling complaints by serving and former members of the Australian Defence Force relating to their service
• Immigration Ombudsman—handling complaints about the Department of Immigration and Citizenship
• Law Enforcement Ombudsman—handling complaints about the conduct and practices of the Australian Federal Police and its members
• Postal Industry Ombudsman—handling complaints about Australia Post and private postal operators registered with the Postal Industry Ombudsman scheme
• Taxation Ombudsman—handling complaints about the ATO.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman is also the ACT Ombudsman in accordance with s 28 of the ACT Self-Government (Consequential Provisions) Act 1988 (Cth). The role of ACT Ombudsman is performed under the Ombudsman Act 1989 (ACT), and is funded in accordance with a memorandum of understanding between the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the ACT Government. The ACT Ombudsman submits an annual report to the ACT Legislative Assembly on the performance of the ACT Ombudsman function.

Organisation and structure

The national office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the office of the ACT Ombudsman are co-located in Canberra. The Commonwealth Ombudsman also has offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.

The Ombudsman and two Deputy Ombudsmen are statutory officers appointed under the Ombudsman Act. Staff are employed under the Public Service Act 1999.

The office comprises a range of functional elements.

• Central office functions and responsibilities (including human resources, information technology, financial services, records management and public affairs) and the principal specialist teams are based in the national office in Canberra, as well as complaint handling relating to the ACT Ombudsman function.
• Offices throughout Australia handle complaints and undertake some specialist work. A Senior Assistant Ombudsman supervises the state and territory offices.

Details on the office’s senior executive and their responsibilities are set out in Chapter 4—Management and accountability

Figure 2.1 illustrates the organisational structure of the Ombudsman's office.

FIGURE 2.1 Commonwealth Ombudsman organisational structure at 30 June 2007

Outcome and output structure

The Portfolio Budget Statements define one outcome for the office, supported by two outputs.

The outcome is administrative action by Australian Government agencies that is fair and accountable. The supporting outputs are:

1. review of administrative action
2. review of statutory compliance in specified areas.

Details of the Commonwealth Ombudsman's achievement of the outcome and outputs are in Chapter 3—Performance Report.