CHAPTER 2 | about us

Role and functions

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has two major statutory roles; both aim to safeguard the rights of people who deal with Australian Government agencies. These roles are:

• the investigation and review of administrative actions of Australian Government officials and agencies by investigating complaints from individuals, groups or organisations
  
• 'own motion' or 'own initiative' investigations by undertaking investigations of Commonwealth administrative actions—that is, on the initiative of the Ombudsman—often arising from the insight gained from handling individual complaints.

In either case, the Ombudsman can recommend that corrective action be taken by an agency. This occurs either specifically in an individual case or generally by a change to relevant legislation, administrative policies or procedures.

'A key objective of the Ombudsman is to foster good public administration within Australian Government agencies …'

The guiding principle in an Ombudsman investigation is whether the administrative action under investigation is unlawful, unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, improperly discriminatory, factually deficient, or otherwise wrong.

In other words, Ombudsman investigations are based on assessing whether there has been defective administration. A key objective of the Ombudsman is to foster good public administration within Australian Government agencies, ensuring that the principles and practices of public administration are sensitive, responsive and adaptive to the interests of members of the public.

The Ombudsman Act confers two specialist roles on the Ombudsman:

• Defence Force Ombudsman—handling grievances lodged by serving and former members of the Australian Defence Force
• Taxation Ombudsman—handling complaints about the Australian Taxation Office.

AFP

Under the Complaints (Australian Federal Police) Act 1981, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the AFP are jointly responsible for managing complaints about AFP members. These members may be employed in international, national and ACT community policing duties.

ACT Ombudsman

The Commonwealth Ombudsman also performs the role of ACT Ombudsman under the Ombudsman Act 1989 (ACT) in accordance with a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ombudsman and the ACT Government. The Ombudsman submits an annual report to the ACT Legislative Assembly on the performance of the ACT Ombudsman function.

Values

The key values of the Commonwealth Ombudsman are:

• independence
• impartiality
• integrity
• accessibility
• professionalism
• teamwork.