"• The prohibitions against disclosure in the TI and Customs Acts prevented the AFP from producing for inspection by the applicant under the discovery order, those parts of the five affidavits which contained information obtained from the telecommunications interceptions and listening devices, or designated warrant information, that is, information about the TI warrants or the related services or users (at 503, 504 and 522-3).
• The prohibitions did not prevent the applicant, in resisting the AFP's public interest immunity claim, from placing reliance upon the AFP's open affidavit and the five annexed "edited" affidavits, or from contending that there is no public interest immunity which would prevent him from inspecting the documents (at 503, 504, 505, 507 and 510).
• The word "person" in the prohibition provisions did not apply to or include the Court in this proceeding, so that the judge hearing the public interest immunity claim could examine those parts of the five affidavits containing the prohibited information (at 505-7).
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• The definition of "designated warrant information" and the various provisions in the TI Act which invoke it are to be read purposively, to avoid absurdity. It would be absurd that the prohibitions in s 63 should continue to apply to such information once it is in the public domain, by, for example, having been given in evidence publicly at a prosecution (at 509-10).
• Sub-section 63(2) is to be read down so as not to apply to designated warrant information already known to all relevant parties in the present proceeding.
• Sub-section 63(2) of the TI Act does not prevent a person from compelling production of the documents in question to this or to any other court by the process of subpoena. Question 2(a) was answered affirmatively by the Full Court because it related to production to a person, as distinct from a court. Having compelled production of the documents to a court in which a person such as the applicant is being prosecuted for a prescribed offence, the person would be entitled to give the designated warrant information in evidence in that proceeding in the course, for example, of a hearing, on the voir dire, of the question of the admissibility into evidence against the person charged, of information obtained by a TI pursuant to a warrant (at 511).
• The purpose of the prohibition on s 63(2) of the TI Act is not only one of protecting privacy. The prohibition is also directed to assisting law enforcement. Contravention of s 63(2) is, on its face, inimical to the processes of law enforcement, because it enables identification of a particular telecommunications service or person the subject of a TI warrant (at 511).
• Conformably with what another Full Federal Court had said in Flanagan v Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (1996) 134 ALR 495, a challenge to a warrant directed to the admissibility of evidence in a trial should ordinarily be brought as part of the trial in order to avoid "fragmentation" of the trial (at 519).
• The operation and effect of s 63 in the present case is to make certain evidence unavailable to the applicant, and so, in practice, to prevent him from proving a case of invalidity of a certain kind in administrative review proceedings. Where, as here, the applicant is being prosecuted, in order not to 'fragment' the criminal proceeding, it is only in exceptional or extraordinary circumstances that this Court would grant relief in respect of a warrant (cf. Flanagan, above). The effect of s 63 is that it is impossible for a person in the applicant's position, in any proceeding other than an exempt proceeding, to establish what is contained in, or omitted from, the application and supporting affidavit, and, to that extent and in that respect, to establish that the "warrant" does not enliven the exception in para 7(2)(b) to the prohibition in s 7(1) [of intercepting a communication over a telecommunications system]. Sub-section 7(1) and Part XA reveal an intention that the only rights which an individual is intended to have in respect of an interception are the rights provided for in the TI Act, and that the only remedies which he or she is to have are those provided for in Part XA. The map of substantive rights of the individual in respect of interception of telephone communications is that laid down in the TI Act itself, and is not to be found elsewhere (at 520-1)."
With one qualification we are content to adopt the above summary of Beaumont J. The qualification is that Lindgren J in Kizon v Palmer at 510 said: