Foreword

It has been a productive and challenging year at the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office. Through the work of the dedicated staff of the office, we have again made a significant contribution by both resolving individual complaints about agencies within our jurisdiction, and by improving broader public administration. Our contribution is outlined in more detail throughout this report.

During 2011–12 we received the highest number of complaints ever received by this office—22,991 in-jurisdiction complaints of the 40,092 total approaches we received. This was 16% more than 2010–11 complaint numbers.

We investigated five per cent more in-jurisdiction complaints than we did in 2010–11. Of the complaints we received we investigated 4,667 separate complaints, compared to 4,468 in 2010–11. More than 18% of those required more substantial investigation, sometimes involving a high level of senior officer involvement and the use of our formal powers. The timeliness of our complaint-handling also improved, with 27% of complaints finalised in one month (up from 20% the previous year).

We completed a number of own motion investigations and produced reports on five of these. Inspection reports of the records of controlled operations of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) and the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI), and the surveillance devices records of the AFP, ACC and the Victorian Police Special Projects Unit were also published in January and March 2012 respectively.

We made seven formal submissions to Parliamentary committees and a number of submissions to government inquiries. We provided 110 reports on people who have been held in detention for two years to the Minister for Immigration for tabling in Parliament, compared to 41 reports in the previous year.

We began the year with a much higher staffing level than we could support under our funding, requiring us to take a number of steps to decrease overall staffing. We farewelled 44 staff through the year, seven through a voluntary redundancy program in the last quarter of the year. The office finished the year with an overspend of $0.311 million dollars, but is now in a position to live within its budget during the 2012–13 year.

Substantial improvement to the office’s information system infrastructure and a refresh of supporting HR and IT policies and procedures strengthened our operations. In the last quarter, we undertook a review of organisational structure and processes, with a view to ensuring we were well-placed to manage increasing complaint numbers within ongoing funding that is predicted to reduce. We moved to a new structure as an outcome of this review in August 2012.

Funding we received in 2007 to provide independent oversight and a complaints mechanism in relation to the Australian Government’s Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) and Closing the Gap initiatives in the NT came to an end in June 2012. Despite the ending of formal funding for this role, the office remains committed to making complaint services accessible to Indigenous Australians and to working with agencies to identify and improve government administration in this area.

We continued our involvement in building the capacity of other ombudsmans’ offices in the Pacific Region through our role as chair of the Pacific Ombudsman Alliance. A particular highlight of our relationship with our Pacific colleagues was the bringing together of 14 officials from across the Pacific for the Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption Conference in Fremantle in November 2011.

We welcomed three new functions to the office during the year. From 1 June 2012, we began our role oversighting the Fair Work Building and Construction’s use of coercive examination powers. In June 2012 the Defence Force Ombudsman finalised a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chief of Air Force to formalise our new role in investigating complaints about aircraft noise arising from the Super Hornets’ operations at RAAF Base Amberley.

In July the Norfolk Island Act 2012 was passed by the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly, and we commenced our role as Norfolk Island Ombudsman in August 2012. In March 2012, I attended a three-day community information program on Norfolk Island with staff from the office. This was a joint program involving the Information Commissioner, the President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office. It was timed to coincide with the formal start of the AAT’s jurisdiction over Norfolk Island administrative decisions. Our visit provided a great opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the Island, its residents and history. We look forward to our new role on behalf of the residents of Norfolk Island.

The former Ombudsman, Allan Asher, resigned and departed from the office on 28 October 2011. On 17 September 2012 we welcomed our new Ombudsman, Colin Neave AM. As a senior leader of both commonwealth and state public agencies, Mr Neave brings a wealth of experience to this office. He was the former Chief Ombudsman of the Financial Ombudsman Service, and has served as the Australian Banking Industry Ombudsman. We look forward to the coming years under his leadership.

Alison Larkins
Deputy Ombudsman
(Acting Ombudsman
October 2011–September 2012)