The National Museum of Australia researches, collections, preserves and exhibits historical material of the Australian nation.
Established in 1980, the Museum is a publicly funded institution governed as a statutory authority in the Australian Government's Arts portfolio. The Museum’s building on Acton Peninsula, Canberra opened in March 2001.
The Museum has a comprehensive suite of plans and policies. These are monitored and reviewed at regular intervals and made publicly available on the Museum’s website.
The National Museum of Australia's comprehensive suite of public policies is listed below. As stated in our IPS agency plan, the Museum is progressively converting policies from PDF into HTML as they are reviewed. However, you may request an early conversion at feedback@nma.gov.au
- Acceptance of gifts and benefits policy
- Accountable disposal policy
- Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ancestral Human Remains management and repatriation policy
- Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander secret/sacred, sensitive and private material policy
- Audience development policy
- Collection care and preservation policy
- Collections development policy
- Collections – deaccessioning and disposal policy
- Collections – return of cultural objects policy
- Digital preservation and digitisation policy
- Diversity and inclusion policy
- Family and domestic violence policy
- Environmental management policy
- First Nations cultural rights and engagement policy
- Indigenous Australian Art Charter of Principles for Publicly Funded Collection Institutions
- Intellectual property policy
- International and domestic engagements policy
- Interpretation policy
- Investment policy
- Loans policy
- Non-Australian indigenous human remains policy
- Privacy policy
- Publishing policy
- Radiation safety policy
- Reasonable adjustment policy
- Research and scholarship policy
- Research Library collection development policy
- Social media policy
- Unsatisfactory attendance and non-performance of duties policy
- Volunteers policy
- Working with children and young people policy
- Work Health and Safety policy
- Assistance animal and disability aid guidelines and procedures
- Code of Conduct guidelines and procedures
- Complaints handling procedures
- Data breach response procedures
- Public interest disclosure procedures
- Preventing bullying and harassment guidelines
- Reasonable adjustment procedure
- Ticket refund and exchange
- Agency file lists
- Annual reports
- Australian Public Service Employee Census
- Contract lists
- Executive and highly paid staff remuneration
- FOI disclosure log
- Gifts and benefits register
- Privacy Impact Assessment Register
- Protection of Cultural Objects on Loan Scheme
- Review of exhibitions and programs (2003)
- Summary report of review into Rover Thomas acquisition (2022)
The National Museum of Australia welcomes your feedback, whether it is formal or informal, positive or negative.
Your rights
The Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) gives any person the right to:
- access copies of documents (except exempt documents) we hold
- ask for information we hold about you to be changed or annotated if it is incomplete, out of date, incorrect or misleading, and
- seek a review of our decision not to allow you access to a document or not to amend your personal record.
You can ask to see any document that we hold. We can refuse access to some documents, or parts of documents that are exempt. Exempt documents may include those relating to national security, documents containing material obtained in confidence (such as documents including secret/sacred material) and certain material placed in the national historical collection.
Documents available outside the FOI Act
You may be able to get certain information, including personal information we hold about you, without following a formal process under the FOI Act.
You should also check the information we have published under the Information Publication Scheme and FOI disclosure log to see if what you are seeking is already available.
How to make a request
Your request must:
- be in writing
- state that the request is an application for the purposes of the FOI Act
- provide information about the document(s) to assist us to process your request
- provide an address for reply.
You can send your request:
By post
FOI Contact Officer
(Manager, Legal Services)
National Museum of Australia
GPO Box 1901
CANBERRA ACT 2601
By email
foi@nma.gov.au
If you ask a third party to make an FOI request on your behalf, you need to provide a specific, written authority to send copies of documents to you, care of that person, or to allow that person to inspect copies of documents containing information about you.
If you require assistance with your request, please contact the FOI Contact Officer on 02 6208 5216 or by email at foi@nma.gov.au
Fees and charges
There is no application fee for an FOI request.
There are no processing charges for requests for access to documents containing only personal information about you. However, processing charges may apply to other requests. The most common charges are:
| Activity item | Charge |
|---|---|
| Search and retrieval: time we spend searching for or retrieving a document | $15 per hour |
| Decision making: time we spend in deciding to grant or refuse a request, including examining documents, consulting with other parties, and making deletions |
First five hours: Nil Subsequent hours: $20 per hour |
| Transcript: preparing a transcript from a sound recording, shorthand or similar medium | $4.40 per page of transcript |
| Photocopy | $0.10 per page |
| Inspection: supervision by an agency officer of your inspection of documents or hearing or viewing an audio or visual recording at our premises | $6.25 per half hour (or part thereof) |
| Delivery: posting or delivering a copy of a document at your request | Cost of postage or delivery |
If we decide to impose a charge, we will give you a written estimate and the basis of our calculation. Where the estimated charge is between $20 and $100, we may ask you to pay a deposit of $20, or where the estimated charge exceeds $100, we may ask you to pay a 25% deposit before we process your request.
You can ask for the charge to be waived or reduced for any reason, including financial hardship or on the grounds of public interest. If you do so, you should explain your reasons and you may need to provide some evidence.
What you can expect from us
We will tell you within 14 days that we have received your request. We will also give you an estimate of the charges that apply to your request. We will give you our decision within 30 days unless that time has been extended. If a document contains information about a third party, we will need to consult them and may need to extend the time to give you our decision by another 30 days. We may also seek your agreement to extend the time by up to 30 days if your request is complex.
If you disagree with our decision
When we have made a decision about your FOI request, we will send you a letter explaining our decision and your review and appeal rights.
You can ask for the following decisions to be reviewed:
- if we refuse to give you access to all or part of a document or if we defer giving you access
- if we impose a charge
- if we refuse to change or annotate information about you that you claim is incomplete, incorrect, out of date or misleading.
A third party who disagrees with our decision to give you documents that contain information about them can also ask for our decision to be reviewed.
Internal review
You can request in writing that we reconsider our decision through an internal review. An internal review will be conducted by another officer in our agency. We will advise you of our new decision within 30 days of receiving your request.
Information Commissioner review
You can ask the Australian Information Commissioner to review our original decision or our decision on internal review within 60 days of the date of decision (or 30 days after you are notified if you are an affected third party). The Information Commissioner can affirm or vary the decision or substitute a new decision. The Information Commissioner may decide not to conduct a review in certain circumstances. More information is available at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) website at www.oaic.gov.au.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with the way we have handled your request, you can complain to the Australian Information Commissioner who may investigate our actions. More information is available on the OAIC’s website at www.oaic.gov.au.The Commonwealth Ombudsman can also investigate complaints about our actions. However, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Information Commissioner will consult to avoid the same matter being investigated twice.
More information
If you require more information, please contact the FOI Contact Officer on 02 6208 5131 or by email at foi@nma.gov.au
Certain documents that we have released under the FOI Act can be obtained at our FOI disclosure log page at www.nma.gov.au/about_us/foi/disclosure_log/.
Information about our Information Publication Scheme can be obtained at www.nma.gov.au/ips/.
The National Museum of Australia (Museum) is an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) and is required to comply with the Information Publication Scheme (IPS) requirements.
The agency plan describes how the Museum proposes to do this, as required by s 8(1) of the FOI Act.
You may also like