Mansfield v Department of Family and Community Services
[2014] NSWCATAD 43
At a glance
Source factsCourt
NCAT Administrative and Equal Opportunity
Decision date
2014-04-08
Source
Original judgment source is linked above.
Judgment (10 paragraphs)
BACKGROUND 1Jonathon Mansfield, the Applicant, requested the Respondent, the Department of Family and Community Services to provide access to information, pursuant to the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 ('GIPA Act'). His request, related to: I request access to information in records concerning false allegation of sexual abuse from counsellor at Women's Health Centre, Katoomba to JIRT Penrith and question asked by detectives to my daughter 2Some information was provided to the applicant in redacted form. Upon internal review further information was provided to the applicant. He now seeks review of that decision in order to obtain the balance of the information.
RELEVANT LEGISLATION 3The objects of the GIPA Act are set out in s.3, which provides: 3 Object of Act (1) In order to maintain and advance a system of responsible and representative democratic Government that is open, accountable, fair and effective, the object of this Act is to open government information to the public by: (a) authorising and encouraging the proactive public release of government information by agencies, and (b) giving members of the public an enforceable right to access government information, and (c) providing that access to government information is restricted only when there is an overriding public interest against disclosure. (2) It is the intention of Parliament: (a) that this Act be interpreted and applied so as to further the object of this Act, and (b) that the discretions conferred by this Act be exercised, as far as possible, so as to facilitate and encourage, promptly and at the lowest reasonable cost, access to government information. 4It was not disputed that the information the subject of this application, is government information and is held by an agency: s.4(1) of the GIPA Act. 5Section 5 provides that there is a presumption in favour of the disclosure of government information unless there is an 'overriding public interest against disclosure.' 6Subsection 12(1) provides that there is a 'general public interest in favour of the disclosure of government information.' Subsection 12(2) provides that nothing in the Act limits any other public interest consideration in favour of the disclosure of government information, which may be taken into account for the purpose of determining whether there is an overriding public interest against disclosure of government Information. The subsection also sets out a number of examples of public interest considerations in favour of disclosure of government information. 7Section 13 of the GIPA Act sets out the test that is to be applied in determining whether there is an overriding public interest against disclosure. That test is in the following terms: 13Public interest test There is an "overriding public interest against disclosure" of government information for the purposes of this Act if (and only if) there are public interests considerations against disclosure and, on balance, those considerations outweigh the public interest considerations in favour of disclosure 8The public interest considerations against disclosure are set out in a Table in s.14 of the GIPA Act ('the Table').