Dear Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade,

I would like to request under the Official Information Act and/or the Privacy Act all correspondence (all documents: including emails, briefings, memos, and draft responses) related to a previous OIA request I have sent: my request of the 23rd of November 2012 regarding the recognition of Myanmar instead of Burma. I am particularly interested in any correspondence between MFAT and the Minister of Foreign Affairs' office.

Although it is not required by the OIA I understand it is often useful to know the purpose of a request. I am making this request because it is coming up to six months since I sent this OIA request, and I have yet to receive a response, despite a complaint to the Ombudsman. This is by far the longest an OIA request has taken for me, and in my experience once a complaint about a delay-denial is lodged with the Ombudsman a response is usually received reasonably quickly. This has not happened here, so I am interested to see exactly what the internal process applied to my OIA request was.

* In the event that any information is withheld I would like to request the reasons that the information was withheld (under s23 of the OIA), rather than just a statutory reference: for example "this information would reveal the names of persons who have indicated they want to be kept secret" rather than simply stating s9(2)(a).
* If any documents are withheld in full I would like to request the titles and dates of the documents
* If the names of any public servants are withheld I would like to instead request their job title and which organisation they work for.

Feel free to contact me if you wish me to clarify my request.

Yours faithfully,

Joshua Grainger

Dear Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade,

The deadline for answering my OIA/Privacy Act request (sent May 15) has now passed. According to the Ombudsman calculator the deadline for answering my request was the 14th of June, and it is now the 24th of June. Can I please have an update on the status of my request? I understand that MFAT is understaffed and overworked, it is just that I would appreciate an update on the status of my request.

Yours faithfully,

Joshua Grainger