Luck v University of Southern Queensland

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT 1 There is before the Court an adjourned application by the University of Southern Queensland ("the USQ") for summary judgment in this proceeding. By notice of motion, which is undated but which was filed in the Court on 20 October 2008, the applicant applies for an order that I withdraw from the further hearing of the matter, on the grounds: "… of actual bias, prejudgment and lack of procedural fairness demonstrated against the applicant in respect of this matter and other matters, VID464/2008, VID488/2008" 2 A similar application was made to me on 5 September 2008, in the present proceeding and the application was then rejected. When it was renewed this morning I told the applicant that I would not revisit that ruling, but that I would hear her on any events which had occurred since 5 September 2008, on which she wished to rely. Her submissions, this morning, were founded on the reasons I had given for refusing her earlier application. She referred to no event that has occurred since 5 September 2008 in support of her present application. I do not consider that there can be any proper basis for me to disqualify myself by reason of what I said in explaining my reasons for refusing her earlier disqualification application. 3 I do not propose to re-canvas what I said in those reasons; although, because the applicant has this morning relied on things that she asserts were said in the course of those reasons, I propose to publish as an annexure to this ruling a statement of the reasons given orally on 5 September 2008. 4 I wish to add only this. The applicant suggests that what I said in my earlier reasons relating to the conduct of counsel assigned to assist her under O 80 of the Federal Court Rules, suggested that I had had extra curial contact with counsel over the matter. This did not occur. Insofar as my judgment on 5 September 2008 was based on the dealings between counsel and Ms Luck, I relied on what she told me had passed between them and on what, in my view, was evident from the nature of the referral to counsel. It is to be borne in mind that what was referred to counsel was Ms Luck's appeal and the USQ's application for summary judgment. It was referred so that counsel could advise Ms Luck as to the legal efficacy of the submissions which had, by then, been filed, in writing, and in which the USQ's advanced legal argument in support of the proposition that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ("the Tribunal") was unquestionably correct in ruling that it lacked jurisdiction to deal with the application before it from Ms Luck. In my view, it was obvious that counsel, in those circumstances, was not required or obliged to look at any of the documents that had been generated in the course of the application to the USQ, under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth), because what had brought the matter to the Tribunal was an alleged deemed refusal by the USQ to respond to a request for documents from Ms Luck. By definition there had been no ruling on the merits of any document. There was, therefore, no occasion for counsel to look at documents that had been sought and obtained under freedom of information legislation and the other documents to which I referred in the reasons which I gave on 5 September 2008. 5 For those reasons I reject the application made in paragraph 1 of the applicant's notice of motion, filed on 20 October 2008.