Summary of relevant legal principles
23 The parties were generally agreed on the relevant principles to apply in determining both the subsistence of a claim for privilege and implied waiver. Reference was made to various authorities, including Mann v Carnell (1999) 201 CLR 1 (Carnell); Bennett v Chief Executive Officer, Australian Customs Service (2004) 140 FCR 101; AWB Limited v Cole (No 5) (2006) 155 FCR 30 (Cole); Osland v Secretary, Department of Justice (2008) 234 CLR 275 (Osland); British American Tobacco Australia Ltd v Secretary, Department of Health and Ageing (2011) 195 FCR 123 (BATA) and Cooper v Hobbs [2013] NSWCA 70. Drawing on those authorities, the relevant principles concerning the subsistence of privilege may be summarised as follows:
(a) privilege attaches to communications between legal adviser and client for the dominant purpose of giving or obtaining legal advice, where the communications are confidential and the legal advisor is acting in his or her professional capacity;
(b) the party claiming privilege bears the onus of establishing the facts necessary to establish the claim. The onus might be discharged by evidence as to the circumstances and context in which the communications occurred or the documents were brought into existence, or by evidence as to the purposes of the person who made the communication, or authored the document, or procured its creation, but might also be discharged by reference to the nature of the documents supported by argument or submissions;
(c) the existence of privilege is not established merely by using verbal formula, or by asserting that privilege applies to particular communications, or that communications are undertaken for the purpose of obtaining or giving "legal advice";
(d) for privilege to attach to communications between a salaried legal adviser and his or her employer, the adviser must be consulted in a professional capacity in relation to a professional matter and the communications must be made in confidence and arise from the relationship of lawyer and client (it appears that the possession of a current practising certificate is not an essential precondition to the availability of privilege but that issue need not be determined here);
(e) although the concept of legal advice is reasonably broad, it does not extend to advice that is purely commercial or of a public relations character;
(f) subject to meeting the dominant purpose test, privilege extends to notes, memoranda or other documents made by officers or employees of the client that relate to information sought by the client's legal adviser to enable him or her to advise; and
(g) the Court has power to examine a document over which privilege is claimed and, where there is a disputed claim, the High Court has said that the Court should not be hesitant to exercise such a power (see Grant v Downs (1976) 135 CLR 674 at 689). The essential purpose of such an inspection is to determine whether, on its face, the nature and contents of the document support the claim for privilege.
24 These authorities also establish the following relevant principles concerning implied waiver of privilege (noting that it is common ground here that the common law principles apply at this stage of the proceedings and not Part 3.10 of the Evidence Act 1995 (Cth)):
(a) privilege will be waived where the conduct of the person claiming it is inconsistent with the maintenance of the confidentiality in the relevant communication which the privilege is intended to protect;
(b) the test for implied waiver is objective, thus where such inconsistency is found, privilege will be waived regardless of the subjective intention of the party claiming the privilege;
(c) whether there is inconsistency is to be determined in the context and circumstances of the case and in the light of any considerations of fairness arising from that context and those circumstances;
(d) the question of implied waivers raise matters of fact and degree;
(e) disclosure of the gist, conclusion, substance or effect of a privileged communication does not necessarily effect a waiver of legal professional privilege in respect of the advice as a whole. Whether it does or not in a particular case depends on whether, in the circumstances of that case, the requisite inconsistency exists between the disclosure on the one hand and the maintenance of confidentiality on the other;
(f) the context includes such matters as the nature of the matter in respect of which the advice was received, the evident purpose of the person making the disclosure, and the legal and practical consequences of limited, rather than complete, disclosure; and
(g) where the party claiming privilege has disclosed or deployed the relevant information in order to achieve some forensic or other advantage for itself, or to disadvantage another person in a similar way, this may amount to conduct which is inconsistent with the maintenance of the confidentiality which the privilege is intended to protect. Accordingly, the purpose for which the partial disclosure was made is important.
25 With those general principles in mind, I will now address in turn the issues of:
(a) subsistence of the privilege; and
(b) whether the privilege has been waived.