NSW OFFICE OF FAIR TRADING

this NSW government department holds millions of dollars in unclaimed monies on behalf of individuals and refuses to disclose those details to the public - we applied under FOI to obtain the details so that we could alert those individuals to their entitlements (if and when they applied to us) but were refused access by A Gawdan A/Co-ordinator FOI Dept of Fair Trading PO Box 972 Parramatta NSW 2124 - in response we said "If ever there was cause for release of information in the public interest, this is it. Indeed records of unclaimed monies should be searchable by the public, as they are in the cases of records held by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission and by most offices of state revenue. It is incomprehensible that your department (of all government agencies) should not provide public access to these records and that stance is reflected in the totally illogical reasons you have provided for refusing access" - indeed we spoke to a Team Leader and he acknowledged the records should be searchable but the department "has just never got around to it". - and this is supposedly the office of fair trading!!