How New Zealand actually works, the OIA

The OIA, how to ask the government for its own records

Two acts, one principle: official information is public unless there is a good reason to keep it back. This is the law that puts the council's paperwork within reach of anyone who asks.

What it is

Two statutes do the same job at two levels of government:

• The Official Information Act 1982 (OIA), covers ministers, government departments and most Crown entities. Its engine is section 5, the principle of availability: the question of whether information should be released is decided on the basis that it shall be made available unless there is good reason for withholding it — Official Information Act 1982.
• The Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA), the same rules aimed at councils, community boards and council-controlled organisations, plus a second job the OIA doesn't have: it also requires council meetings to be open to the public — LGOIMA 1987.

"Official information" is deliberately broad, not just documents but emails, drafts, data, photos, recordings and anything else the agency holds, including work its contractors hold on its behalf. What it isn't: information the agency doesn't hold, information held purely personally by staff, and information held by courts or Parliament itself (those have their own rules).

Who can ask, and what for

Any New Zealand citizen or resident, anyone currently in the country, and any company incorporated or doing business here — OIA s12. You do not need a reason, a lawyer, a form, or the words "Official Information Act", a request counts the moment you ask an agency for specified official information, though naming the Act makes the clock unmistakable.

The question can be as small as "the report on my street's flooding" or as large as "every briefing on the stadium since January". The agency must give reasonable assistance, if your request is too broad or unclear, it is meant to help you narrow it, not simply bounce it — Ombudsman, the requester's guide.

The clock

• 20 working days. The agency must decide and tell you as soon as reasonably practicable, and never later than twenty working days after the request lands — OIA s15.
• Extensions. For a large quantity of information or for necessary consultation, the agency can extend the deadline, but it must tell you before the original date, say how long, and give you the right to complain about the extension itself.
• Transfers. If a different agency holds what you asked for, yours must be transferred within ten working days, and you must be told it happened.
• Urgency. You can ask for urgent treatment; you owe the agency a reason why, and it must consider it.

Weekends, public holidays and the Christmas shutdown (25 December to 15 January) don't count as working days, an end-of-year request can take over a month of calendar time and still be on the clock.

Yes, no, and the red pen

An answer can be a full release, a release with deletions (the withheld parts marked and the ground cited), or a refusal. The grounds come in two weights:

• Conclusive reasons, release can be refused outright where it would prejudice national security, international relations, the maintenance of the law, a person's safety, or seriously damage the economy (OIA s6; LGOIMA s6 is the local twin).
• Everything else is weighed, privacy, free and frank advice, commercially sensitive information, negotiations, legal privilege and the rest (OIA s9; LGOIMA s7) can only justify withholding if the public interest in release doesn't outweigh the harm. That balancing requirement is where most OIA fights are actually fought.

Whatever the answer, the agency must give reasons and must tell you about your right to complain to the Ombudsman, a refusal letter without those is incomplete on its face — OIA ss18–19.

What it costs

The Acts allow a reasonable charge for supplying information, labour and materials, not a deterrent fee. Central government works to the Ministry of Justice charging guide: the first hour of staff time and the first twenty pages are free, then set rates after that. Councils set their own schedules under the Local Government Act. An agency that wants to charge must tell you the amount, and you can ask for an estimate first or challenge the charge as unreasonable, the Ombudsman hears those complaints too — Ombudsman, the charging guide.

When the answer is no, the Ombudsman

The referee is free to use. The Ombudsman investigates refusals, delays treated as refusals, unreasonable charges, and missing reasons, reads the withheld material itself, and forms an opinion on whether the ground holds — Ombudsman, how complaints work.

After investigating, the Ombudsman can formally recommend release. For a council, a recommendation isn't the end of the road, the local authority can set it aside only by resolving to, a decision made on the public record. Most agencies fold long before that point: the investigation itself is usually the argument won.

The meetings half

LGOIMA's other job: council and community-board meetings are open to the public by default, agendas and reports published at least two working days beforehand. The doors can only close for the reasons the Act lists, privacy, commercially sensitive negotiations and the like, and the resolution to exclude the public must say which reason and why. "Workshop" is not one of the grounds — LGOIMA, Part 7.

Where it strains

• The clock as a ceiling, not a floor. Twenty working days is a maximum; agencies that treat it as a standard turnaround are the Ombudsman's most-complained-about habit.
• Free and frank. The advice-withholding ground is broad enough to hide almost anything embarrassing, and its use is the perennial argument, officials need room to advise, the public needs to see the advice that decided things.
• Proactive release. The system assumes you ask; the reform argument says the answers should be published by default, which is what some agencies now do and what the public platform fyi.org.nz has been doing around them for years — fyi.org.nz, public requests and answers.

Where to read the primary source

• Official Information Act 1982: the central-government law
• Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987: the council's version, meetings included
• The Ombudsman's guide for requesters: the practical manual, including a template letter
• How to ask Christchurch City Council: the door itself
• fyi.org.nz: requests made in public, answers kept in public

Glossary

The Canterbury of it

For a decade this city ran both statutes at once. Requests to the council went under LGOIMA; the rebuild's power-brokers, CERA, EQC, Southern Response, were Crown agencies answering under the OIA. The red-zone maps, the cathedral negotiations and the claim files all sat in the central-government Act, not the council's.

The Act's biggest local failure is on the record. By late 2012 EQC's incoming information requests had jumped from 50–70 a week to more than 160; by May 2013 the commission was quoting waits of six to seven months, routine breach of the twenty-working-day rule. The Chief Ombudsman and the Privacy Commissioner investigated jointly and published Information fault lines: accessing EQC information in Canterbury; EQC accepted every recommendation — Ombudsman, Information fault lines, 2013. A decade on, EQC is still the country's most-requested agency, 6,204 requests completed in the second half of 2022 alone — Te Kawa Mataaho, OIA statistics July–December 2022.

The local file keeps growing on fyi.org.nz, where requests to this council, camera registers, consent files, contracts, sit answered in public.

Last reviewed 20 September 2026, sources: legislation.govt.nz (OIA 1982, LGOIMA 1987), the Ombudsman's requester and charging guides, Christchurch City Council's LGOIMA pages, fyi.org.nz. Corrections: /corrections.