Chapter 2
The organisation
Role and functions
The office of Commonwealth Ombudsman exists to safeguard the community in its dealings with government agencies, and to ensure that administrative action by Australian Government agencies is fair and accountable. The Ombudsman has three major statutory roles:
- complaint investigation: investigating and reviewing the administrative actions of Australian Government officials and agencies, upon receipt of complaints from members of the public, groups and organisations
- own motion investigation: investigating, on the initiative or 'own motion' of the Ombudsman, the administrative actions of Australian Government agencies—often arising from insights gained from handling individual complaints
- compliance auditing: inspecting the records of agencies such as the AFP and ACC, to ensure compliance with legislative requirements applying to selected law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
The complaint and own motion investigation roles of the Ombudsman are the more traditional ombudsman roles that constitute the majority of the work of the office. The guiding principle in an Ombudsman investigation is to examine whether the administrative action under investigation is unlawful, unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, improperly discriminatory, factually deficient, or otherwise wrong. At the conclusion of the investigation, the Ombudsman can recommend that corrective action be taken by an agency. This may occur either specifically in an individual case or more 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, ensuring that the principles and practices of public administration are sensitive, responsive and adaptive to the interests of members of the public.
In undertaking these roles, the Ombudsman is impartial and independent. The Ombudsman is not an advocate for complainants or for agencies.
The role of the Commonwealth Ombudsman is principally performed under the Ombudsman Act.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman can consider complaints about almost all Australian Government departments and agencies, and most contractors delivering services to the community for, or on behalf of, the Australian Government.
In addition the Ombudsman Act confers five specialist roles on the Ombudsman:
- Defence Force Ombudsman—handling complaints by serving and former members of the Australian Defence Force relating to their service
- Immigration Ombudsman—dealing with matters relating to immigration
- Law Enforcement Ombudsman—handling complaints about the conduct and practices of the AFP and its members.
- Postal Industry Ombudsman—handling complaints about Australia Post and private postal operators registered with the Postal Industry Ombudsman scheme
- Taxation Ombudsman—dealing with matters relating to the Australian Taxation Office.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman is also the ACT Ombudsman in accordance with s 28 of the ACT Self–Government (Consequential Provisions) Act 1988 (Cth). The role of ACT Ombudsman is performed under the Ombudsman Act 1989 (ACT), and is funded under a services agreement between the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the ACT Government. The ACT Ombudsman submits an annual report to the ACT Legislative Assembly on the performance of the ACT Ombudsman function.
Top
Previous
page | Next page—Chapter 2–Organisation and structure