Commissioner of Police v Camilleri

BACKGROUND 1On 20 December 2011 AIN, the applicant, a medical practitioner, requested the respondent to provide access to information, pursuant to the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 ('the Act'). She sought documents held by the respondent in her name, other than documents included in the files provided by the respondent on 2 December 2011, and other documents relating to her not held in that file and all other documents up until the date of the application. 2About 2,000 pages were released to the applicant but the respondent refused access to 139 documents, on the basis that there was an overriding public interest against the disclosure of the information. The applicant seeks review of that decision. 3After the application for review was filed, the respondent released some further information - some whole documents and some partial documents. 4Since the application for review the respondent has conducted a further search and has located a further 24 documents. The respondent considered that the public interest favours disclosure of all of those documents, and I understand them to have been provided to the applicant. 5The Tribunal set a timetable for filing evidence and submissions which was broadly complied with. A schedule, detailing the documents to be reviewed by the Tribunal was filed by the respondent, and a copy of the documents which had been withheld from the applicant. The applicant provided a list of documents she considered were missing from those either provided to her or which the respondent had refused to provide. 6The applicant requested the Tribunal to issue a summons to the respondent to produce extensive material, mainly relating to its TRIM system and documents which might be on that system. I came to the view that it was inappropriate to do so in the circumstances of the case. 7In support of its contentions the respondent relied on statements by Miranda St Hill, the respondent's Legal Director, who provided two open statements and also a confidential statement. The respondent asked that the latter statement be kept confidential from the applicant and any other member of the public, so that privilege in those communications is not waived: s.107(3)(b) of the Act, s.75(2)(c) and (d) of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal Act 1997. 8The applicant provided a statement and extensive submissions. Some of her submissions covered the history between the parties, and while informative, were largely irrelevant to the issues to be determined and sought to canvass aspects of the respondent's decision-making in the past which was unassociated with her access application.