Our submissions policy

Calling for public submissions is an integral part of our decision-making process. While we engage with key stakeholders in a range of ways, we test the feasibility of our ideas by asking directly for your input before making a decision.

You can help us ensure our thinking is informed by a variety of perspectives by adding your voice with a public submission.

Our promise 

We will communicate clearly about how to make a submission

We will do this by:

• providing a clear timeframe 
• a number of ways to make a contribution
• guidance on our privacy policy and how to make a confidential submission
• a contact person (by name and contact number) if they have questions about the process or require assistance (e.g. an interpreter). 

We will promote transparency and openness by publishing submissions

Submissions are published on our website so others can see the information we are considering to make decisions. Before we publish submissions we:

• remove personal information including signatures, addresses, emails
• remove any sensitive information (see privacy policy) 
• remove offensive or defamatory content

We will ‘close the loop’ to show your input has been considered

We ‘close the loop’ by providing feedback to submitters, including brief summaries on our website and referring to how input has been considered in our final reports. 

How to make a submission

Submissions can be made in writing or if you need assistance, verbally to one of our staff. We may consider presentations or questions from individuals or groups in a public forum as a public submission. 

You don’t have to follow a particular format, however we often include questions in papers that we are particularly interested in feedback on and it helps if those questions are addressed. 

Submissions can be lodged online, emailed, sent to us by mail or phone through – see our project consultation notes for specific details.

Most of our consultations are online

Most of our consultations are now online using the Victorian Government’s Engage Victoria platform. Engage Victoria means we can provide online engagement without adding to our costs to establish, maintain and manage a standalone consultation platform.

You can use Engage Victoria as a registered or an unregistered visitor. For statistical purposes, Engage Victoria collects depersonalised information from unregistered users measure visitation numbers and user behaviour (e.g pages visited, type of browser) to improve the site.

No private information is collected, stored or provided to the commission from the platform. 

Submissions sent to Engage Victoria for our projects are retrieved by commission staff and stored in our data system. They are not accessed by anyone outside the commission. 

You can read more about Engage Victoria’s privacy policy.

We will publish your submission

Unless you tell us otherwise we will publish your submission on our website.

• If you believe your submission contains information that should be confidential or commercially sensitive you must let us know why in writing. If we agree the information is confidential or commercially sensitive you will need to provide us two copies – one complete and one redacted version (preserving page numbers etc by not simply deleting information).
• If you make your submission public (e.g. by giving it to the media) we will assume confidentiality no longer applies and publish the unredacted version. 
• Your privacy will be protected - we will redact (black out) your address, email and signature before we publish.

We generally do not accept submissions provided anonymously. If you have concerns about your identity being made public, please consider making your submission confidential rather than submitting it anonymously.

Requesting confidentiality and/or anonymity may affect the weight we can give to your submission.

Privacy statement

View our privacy statement on the terms of use page.