19 February 2025
Gus M
[FYI request #29948 email]
Ref: PMO OIA 269-2024-25
Dear Gus,
Official Information Act request: All information regarding Tim Jago
Thank you for your Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) request, received on 31 January
2025. You requested:
“It is an absolute disgrace that the party involved with Tim Jago has both the Minister
for Children and the Minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence.
This is a massive conflict of interest by association of policies and ideals. Yet you went
into agreement with this as Prime Minister.
Under the Offical Information Act 1982, please provide all information you and your
office holds that mentions or alludes to Tim Jago.”
The matters raised in the first part of your request would not be considered subject to the Act
as these relate to the ACT Party. Any involvement of Rt Hon Christopher Luxon would be
considered in his capacity as Leader of the National Party and is therefore also not subject to
the Act.
The information held by the Prime Minister’s Office (the Office) that mentions or alludes to Tim
Jago consists of correspondence from members of the public and news articles that have been
shared amongst Office staff.
It is not in the public interest to collate this information for release as it would require substantial
manual research and collation, particularly to identify correspondence that ‘alludes’ to the topic
of your request. I am therefore refusing your request under section 18(f) of the Act, as it would
require substantial collation to make the requested information available.
Please note, this does not necessarily indicate that this Office holds a large volume of
information that mentions or alludes to Tim Jago; rather, that to identify this information, staff
would need to manually assess hundreds, or potentially thousands, of pieces of
correspondence from members of the public. This also applies to the news articles shared
within the Office, where many news articles on a variety of topics are shared daily, often without
commentary. To fulfil this part of your request, staff would need to manually assess all their
electronic messages to identify the relevant articles, all of which are already publicly available
via the media.
I considered whether there was any merit in seeking a refinement of your request. However, I
do not feel that any refinement would make a significant difference as the same search
functions, which amount to substantial collation, would still be required. Therefore, a refined
request on the same topic is still likely to result in a refusal under section 18(f) of the Act.
You have the right to ask the Ombudsman to investigate and review my decision under section
28(3) of the Act.
Yours sincerely,
Cameron Burrows
Chief of Staff
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