1. However, I agree with the respondent that the public interest weighs against the release of a person's current contact details, particularly where the personal information is not readily available in the public domain. The February 2025 letter states that the non-AAT email address was the Deputy President's "professional email account in his barrister's chambers", and that the AAT understood that the email address "was part of a secure network". As the respondent submits, the February 2025 letter, together with the fact that the respondent had claimed a s 47F exemption over the email address, provide an adequate basis on which the applicant could establish that the Deputy President used a non-AAT email address. Provision of the Deputy President's personal email address would add nothing further to that contention.
2. It follows for the reasons above that I am satisfied that disclosure of the non-AAT email address would involve the unreasonable disclosure of personal information and the email address is therefore conditionally exempt under s 47F of the FOI Act. I am further satisfied that disclosure is not, on balance, in the public interest. This claim for access should therefore also be denied. Accordingly, I have reached the same conclusion with respect to this claim for access to information as the delegate.

ADEQUACY OF THE RESPONDENT'S SEARCHES FOR DOCUMENTS

1. The Revised Decision refused access to paragraphs 1, 4 and 5 of the applicant's FOI Request on the basis that the delegate was satisfied that the documents do not exist and all reasonable searches for them had been undertaken.
2. Section 24A(1) of the FOI Act relevantly provides for a request to be "refuse[d]" if documents cannot be found or do not exist as follows:

(1) An agency or Minister may refuse a request for access to a document if:

(a) all reasonable steps have been taken to find the document; and

(b) the agency or Minister is satisfied that the document:

(i) is in the agency's or Minister's possession but cannot be found; or

(ii) does not exist.

1. The FOI Guidelines (as at December 2021) at [3.89] also explain that:

Agencies and ministers should undertake a reasonable search on a flexible and common sense interpretation of the terms of the request. What constitutes a reasonable search will depend on the circumstances of each request and will be influenced by the normal business practices in the agency's operating environment or the minister's office. At a minimum, an agency or minister should take comprehensive steps to locate documents, having regard to:

•  the subject matter of the documents

•  the current and past file management systems and the practice of destruction or removal of documents

•  the record management systems in place

•  the individuals within an agency or minister's office who may be able to assist with the location of documents, and

•  the age of the documents.

(Footnotes omitted.)

1. In support of the submission that all reasonable steps were taken to locate the documents in question, the respondent relied on the evidence of the following witnesses:

(a) the affidavit of Allan Teves, Executive Director Case Management at the ART, affirmed on 11 July 2025; > > (b) the affidavit of Ryan Blain, Assistant Director Technology Management at the ART, affirmed on 11 July 2025; and > > (c) the supplementary affidavit of Ryan Blain affirmed on 12 September 2025.

2. Mr Teves held the role of Practice Registrar and subsequently Conference Registrar in the period to which the FOI Request relates. He has 12 years' experience operating the Tribunal's case management systems about which he gave evidence. These systems store case related information relevant to National Disability Insurance Scheme matters heard by the Tribunal. Mr Teves reviewed the search minute prepared by the FOI decision maker which records searches that were conducted across all case management systems, namely, TRACS (being an electronic case management system specifically designed for the Tribunal), shared network drives, emails and Microsoft Teams messages, physical files and complaints records.
3. Mr Blain has worked at the Tribunal since 2017, holding the position of Assistant Director Technology Management since January 2024. He holds a Diploma of Information Technology and has worked in information technology fields since 2008. His evidence focused upon the searches undertaken across Microsoft platforms used by the Tribunal for documents falling within the scope of the FOI Request and the results of those searches. He also explained that neither AI nor wildcard characters (which are symbols used to substitute characters within a keyword in a search query e.g., using "licen?e" would return "licence" and "license") were used in the searches. Use of the wildcard searches would, in his view, have massively expanded the number of results returned in response to the searches because it would return all results with a different character where the question mark had been placed. As to the use of AI, Mr Blain explained that:

Technology assisted review is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology which could review a large set of documents, 'learning' whether documents are relevant and identifying them. This technology was not utilised when undertaking searches. > > The Tribunal only has access to technology provided through the Microsoft 365 platform, and no technology assisted review tools are approved for use by the Tribunal. This includes the use of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is disabled for all users at the Tribunal. There are no other tools or platforms approved under Tribunal policies which could complete administrator searches for email correspondence and Microsoft Teams chats.

4. Mr Blain's evidence regarding the non-use of AI technology accords with the ART's Acceptable Use of Technology Policy (ART Policy) which applies relevantly to members and employees. Thus, under paragraphs 36 and 37 of the ART Policy, any person who uses the ICT facilities (i.e. any digital information, communication, or technology facilities, equipment or resources provided by the ART) "Must Not enter any ART information, data or records into GenAI/ChatGPT prompts/apps, especially any case or customer data" and "Must Not cut-and-paste any ART content, such as emails, reports, chat logs, code, system errors, etc, into GenAI/ChatGPT prompts/apps" (emphasis in the original). The ART Policy further explains that "The terms 'Must' and 'Must Not' indicate requirements to be followed strictly" (emphasis in the original).
5. Mr Teves and Mr Blain were each cross-examined by counsel for the applicant at the hearing on 30 September 2025. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy and veracity of their clear and cogent evidence.

Reasonableness of the searches and satisfaction that the documents do not exist

1. I agree with the delegate's finding in the Revised Decision that all reasonable steps were taken to locate the documents requested in paragraphs 1, 4 and 5 of the FOI Request and I am satisfied the documents in question do not exist.
2. First, on the basis of Mr Teves' and Mr Blain's evidence, I accept that reasonable searches were undertaken of locations where documents would have been stored in line with normal business practices. The Brisbane Registry of the ART provided the delegate making the Revised Decision with the records of the MDCT matter on the electronic case management system TRACS, two subfolders in Deputy President Hanger's shared network (N:) drive, and a physical case file. The Enterprise Technology Group of the ART then conducted 12 hours of ICT searches of key email inboxes and MS Teams messages by reference to the matter name ("MDCT") and case number ("2020/4203") using a Boolean 'OR' search, resulting in over 1,700 emails which were manually reviewed by the delegate.
3. Secondly, the applicant submitted that the respondent should contact former Tribunal members of the AAT for them to conduct searches of their own files and emails. However, as the respondent submits, former Tribunal members would not have access to the ART's electronic systems, and if any documents were improperly retained by former Tribunal members, such documents would not be subject to the FOI Act because they would not be in the agency's possession.
4. Thirdly, while the applicant contends that some searches were conducted by the respondent using incorrect search terms, an email chain relied upon by the respondent establishes that, while the pseudonym "MDCT" was initially misstated as "MCDT" in search instructions, the error was rectified prior to the Revised Decision.
5. Fourthly, the applicant challenged the reasonableness of the searches undertaken by the respondent on the basis that the potential efficacy of artificial intelligence or wildcard searches was not tested. However, as explained above, Mr Blain's evidence and the ART Policy established that the use of artificial intelligence is not approved for use by the ART, including the use of Microsoft Copilot to conduct searches. Furthermore, I accept Mr Blain's evidence that the use of wildcards in each digit of a pseudonym or file number to capture typographical errors in documents (as suggested by the applicant) would not be reasonable because it would cover millions of potential combinations of those identifiers and thereby capture irrelevant documents, thereby massively and unreasonably expanding the time and resources required to review search results.
6. In the fifth place, the applicant submitted that it is unclear what physical searches in the Brisbane Registry have been conducted. However, that submission is not borne out by the evidence. Rather, the search minute completed by the delegate explained that the hard copy file for the MDCT matter was obtained and reviewed by two members of the legal team. The Revised Decision also states that the delegate had reviewed the hard copy file.
7. Finally, in the course of the cross-examination of Mr Blain at the hearing on 30 September 2025, counsel for the applicant suggested that further searches for unique words such as "jetty", or the surname of MDCT, could have been conducted. The applicant also submitted in closing that Ms Kline's surname could also have been used as a search term, and relied on Mr Blain's indication in cross-examination that additional ICT searches may have taken up to three hours. However, further search terms of this kind had not been suggested by the applicant prior to the hearing and were not raised in the Statement of Facts, Issues and Contentions filed by the applicant. In those circumstances, the respondent was deprived of the opportunity to conduct such searches and lead evidence as to the number of documents which would have been responsive to the searches. As such, I ruled against allowing the applicant to expand her case to include the further search terms at the hearing.

I certify that the preceding 54 (fifty-four) paragraphs are a true copy of the reasons for the decision herein of Judicial Deputy President Perry.

............[SGD]..........................................................

Associate

Dated: 21 January 2026