Shewcroft reduce the ambit of her requests - through written consultations, in accordance with sub-section 24(3) of the Act. Subsequently, the applicant's requests were treated by the respondent as being related in such a way that they should be dealt with together; the one overall refusal dated 14 February 1984 issued, apparently based on sub-section 24(1) of the Act.

By a series of letters dated 1 to 8 March applications for review of this (these) decision(s) were made.

Thereafter a somewhat confusing course of negotiations was had with Mr. Whitehead who had become General Manager of the respondent Corporation in January, during which further attempts were made to settle the matter of the requests by offering the agendas of the various meetings named, with the suggestion that Miss Shewcroft select items from the minutes recourse to which might satisfy her concern.

On 13 April 1984 by eight seperate letters the applicant made stipulations as to certain items, without it is suggested, withdrawing her overall requests; and said that she required all the tapes and recordings of each of the meetings in question.

On 3 May 1984 the respondent purported to treat Miss Shewcroft's letters of 13 April 1984, "as though they were new requests"; and on 14 June 1984 she was informed inter alia that "in respect of the specific items you have selected from the agendas, enquiries reveal that no tape recordings exist, nor are there any video recordings"; but a schedule of purported decisions refusing access, deferring access and deleting material was made.

No application for external review of this purported decision appears to have been made by the applicant; it would appear therefore that this Tribunal would have no jurisdiction to entertain an application to review it (sub-section 55(2) of the Act).

A study of the correspondence leads me to the conclusion that Miss Shewcroft had never withdrawn her original applications, though willing to consult as to whether her requests could be met by something less than was originally sought; and that no agreement of compromise was reached. Accordingly, it seems to me that the situation in this Tribunal must be viewed as based upon the original requests and the all-embracing refusal under sub-section 24(2) in reply thereto, and that the sole issue should be whether that kind of refusal were rightly taken. The applicant agrees that the eight applications should be dealt with as one matter as the Corporation suggested: and the respondent - that the applicant never withdrew her original eight requests. As Miss Shewcroft put it "I never did retreat from asking for everything and everything was a total accounting of the activities of the Board at each of its meetings by way of agenda, papers before and decisions . . ."

At the hearing affidavits from the applicant dated 28 September 1984 and 30 October 1984 (2) were tendered; and on behalf of the respondent from Norman MacKenzie its Principal Executive Officer and Freedom of Information Liaison Officer of 9 October 1984, and from Anna Funnell Corporation Administrative Officer of 3 September 1984. Oral evidence was given by the applicant, Ms. Funnell and Mr. MacKenzie.

Though each of the (8) original requests denotes a particular Board Meeting as its target for information, there is no question but that Miss Shewcroft's intention was to gain access to the records of and materials involved in, the meetings over the period June to December 1983. I believe that the respondent's approach in treating the eight requests together as a general or "global" request, accords with the facts. And it appears to me that the spirit of the Act calls for them to be so considered, when deciding whether s.24 be applicable to the situation existing once the requests had been made. It would appear to make a nonsense of that Section, if in a case where it would clearly apply to a request for a huge volume of nominated documents, that application of s.24 could be avoided by the mere breaking down of such an overall request to a multitude of virtually contemporaneous requests for single documents or parcels of them which would aggregate to the whole.

So far as appears relevant to this application s.24 of the Act reads as follows:-

"24. (1) Where-

(a) a request is expressed to relate to all documents,

or to all documents of a specified class, that

contain information of a specified kind or relate

to a specified subject-matter, and

(b) the agency or Minister dealing with the request is

satisfied that, apart from this sub-section, the

work involved in giving access to all the documents

to which the request relates would substantially

and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency

from its other operations or would interfere

substantially and unreasonably with the performance

by the Minister of his functions, as the case may

be, having regard to the number and volume of the

documents and to any difficulty that would exist in

identifying, locating or collating the documents

within the filing system of the agency or of the

office of the Minister,

the agency or Minister may refuse to grant access to

the documents in accordance with the request without

having caused those processes to be undertaken."

The submissions made to the Tribunal relate to the question of whether

compliance with the global request, as it has been taken (and I conceive correctly taken) to be, would involve "a substantial and unreasonable diversion of the resources of the agency from its other operations".

The applicant submits, as I understand her argument, that the only factor to be considered was the difficulty of identifying, locating or collating the documents requested, and urges that the course of correspondence and her own experience indicate that such identification, location and collating had been established.

This appears to me to involve an inadequate interpretation of the Section. I construe it as pointing to three factors for consideration before a decision can be made whether access should be given. Firstly, the documents which accord with the request must be identified, located and collated. Secondly, regard must be had to their number and volume. Thirdly, and this I deduce as a matter of commonsense but also from the insertion of the parenthetical phrase "apart from this sub-section", that regard must be had to the work potentially involved in scrutinizing all the material page by page and possibly line by line, to decide whether other Sections of the Act require claims of exemption to be made under a variety of heads and whether deletions could be made to protect the exemptions and give partial access.

Miss Shewcroft has made sturdy assertions that the volume of work involved in complying with her requests is not substantial - basing her estimate on an experience she had in relation to another such request. I prefer to rely as being more realistic, on the material put forward by Mr. MacKenzie and Ms. Funnell in affidavit form and oral evidence which was subject to cross-examination.

Mr. MacKenzie averred on 9 October 1984 that he has had the duties of Freedom of Information Liaison Officer recently added to his other archival functions for which he has a total subordinate staff of 18. He has other administrative functions. The Freedom of Information Act work is handled by himself and three others under a total funding of $100,000. As at October 1984, sixty-seven FOI requests had been dealt with and new requests were arriving at the rate of two per week. Difficulties are being experienced because of the number of requests, lack of staff and facilities, and the hundreds of documents involved in many of the requests.

Looking at the agendas of the relevant Board meetings and examining the nature of the documents involved, he formed the opinion that they covered almost the entire range of the ABC's. total operations and dealt with a number of sensitive, technical, commercial, industrial and property matters. He concluded that the task involved in reading each of the documents and liaising with the particular ABC officers with expertise in the wide range of subject matters referred to, was a task which would require the unreasonable diversion of existing staff from normal activities. In an annexure to his affidavit he set out the following notes:-

"The relevant meetings of the Board contain a total of some 260

minuted items covering wide ranging subjects. There are about

2000 pages of submissions collectively made in respect of those

items.

A sample of six such submissions was selected at random to

ascertain the work load involved in examining the material to

ensure that exempt material would not be disclosed. The

following general observations result from that sampling process.

a) this cursory examination of six submissions

totalling 65 pages took about 45 mins (i.e. about 7

mins for each 10 pages).

b) The submissions contained information which would

justify consideration of exempting documents either

totally or in part on the following occasions:-

s.34 - 1 occasion

s.36 - 2 occasions

s.39 -11 occasions

s.41 - 5 occasions

In addition approval of another agency may have been

involved.

c) No allowance for time has been made for consultation

that would be necessary to adequately determine the

sensitivity of material before it were released."

In evidence, Mr. MacKenzie stated that recently an FOI request ("the Brown

request") had been received for production of Minutes of meetings of the Board of the Corporation over 9 months. He had summarised the effort expended on this request as follows:-

" H.Raiche N.MacKenzie S.Revill

. Extraction of

Minutes and

copying 1/2 day - -

. Examination of

Material and

marking

contentious

paragraphs 1 1/2 days - -

. Discussion on

sensitivity of

material prior to

final decision 1 day 1 day 1/2 day

. Copying material

with exemptions

deleted 1 day - -

. Preparation of

drafts and lists

and checking of

details 1/2 day 1/2 day -

TOTALS (6 1/2 days) 4 1/2 days 1 1/2 days 1/2 day "

And he made the comment "If the Brown effort was applied to the Shewcroft volume more than 60 days of effort would be involved. This is an important factor."

Miss Shewcroft indicated that she accepted his affidavit as true . . . she "would expect only the truth from Mr. MacKenzie".

Ms. Funnell's evidence was directed almost entirely to the subsidiary matter of whether recordings exist of the Board meetings in question. Miss Shewcroft is of the view that something sinister has occurred in regard to any record of the tape recordings of these meetings. I see no reason why Ms. Funnell's evidence on the subject should not be accepted. I do accept it. She stated that as from the July 1983 meeting she arranged for recordings to be made. This was done at the direction of Mr. Myer, the Chairman. The recording equipment failed to operate for the meeting of 25 November 1983 and prior to the next meeting Mr. Myer directed that no further recordings be made. She averred that at no time had anyone given her directions as to retention or destruction of tapes of meetings. She used the tapes to prepare draft minutes of meetings for submission to the Managing Director and Chairperson. She averred that once the typed minutes had been approved by a subsequent Board Meeting, she erased the tapes without any direction from anyone.

Discussion of the extent to which the motivation of the applicant may be taken into account under the various claims to information and counter claims to exemption under the Act, has by no means it seems, been exhausted in the decisions to date of the Federal Court and of this Tribunal. No doubt clarification will be arrived at through further argument and decisions thereon in the process of time. The Act, as has been pointed out, establishes a general right in an applicant to information in the interests of the principle of open Government or administration (ss. 3 and 11); and motivation would appear generally to be irrelevant. Still, it might be thought proper to take motive into account in an application for example, under s.40 of the Act where a substantial adverse effect on an agency's operations must be balanced against "the public interest" in disclosure of documentation involved. And again, in deciding whether disclosure of information relating to the personal affairs of (another) person would be "unreasonable" (s.41(1)); one could envisage the necessity of setting the motivation or need of an applicant against the right to privacy of the person whose "personal affairs" were cited, in the attempt to weigh the "reasonableness" or "unreasonableness" of a requested disclosure. Indeed, the concept of "unreasonableness" of an action, would seem to involve the requirement of a weighing of factors.

In the attempt to ascertain whether the diversion of resources of an agency from its other operations towards questions of right to access to a mass of particular documents, the Act would appear to offer little guidance. One would perhaps have more confidence in finding that triviality of motive or clear intent only to embarrass, could be brought into the account to be contrasted with the sheer mass of work and time involved in the dealing with the request, and to work thus against the applicant; than one might in finding that a personal as against a general public interest, or a clearly established "proper" motive, could tell in an applicant's favour.

Miss Shewcroft has demonstrated at some considerable length her concern for the health of the respondent Corporation's management and affairs, and her scorn for the motives and actions (and her allegations traverse character, abilities, application and indeed honesty) of many of its Board's members and officers. She is plainly as a citizen extremely worried about many ways in which a variety of matters had been handled inside the Corporation. She agrees that her request goes beyond her personal interest. It is also clear that she has a strong personal interest in challenging the use which she asserts has been made by certain of the respondent's officers, of the Pearlman Report into the operations of the respondent's Legal Branch (of which she was a member), whereby she feels that other legal officers and herself have been wrongly criticized and disadvantaged. The matters she raises by way of motivation, in my opinion are neither trivial nor intended merely to embarrass; they are substantial to her and though her asseverations may be thought over-coloured and dramatized to the point of some distortion, could involve public interest. While being in some doubt as to whether the Act requires or authorises this Tribunal so to do, I propose to put her motivation in the scales in weighing the question of substantiality and unreasonableness of diversion of the respondent's resources from its other operations, as is raised under s.24 of the Act.

I form the conclusion that there are a number of factors which the respondent is entitled to bring into the weighing process. The first is the complicated nature of the work necessarily involved, being that of the detailed consideration of a mass of papers and documents covering the spectrum of the Corporation's activities. Such a consideration would appear to involve reference to numerous Sections of the Act and their application to highly sensitive commercial, technical, industrial and multifarious property and contractual matters, and possibly even to relations with foreign countries as for example could be involved in a communication satellite's functioning. The second is the sheer mass of the documentation to be looked at. A third is the work time involved. A fourth is the nature of the resources which are available to the respondent in money, facilities and numbers and qualifications of personnel. Finally, there are the "other operations" to be thought of.

I accept Mr. MacKenzie's evidence as providing an accurate description and estimation of the difficulties inherent in complying with Miss Shewcroft's request. Clearly the respondent's resources as to FOI requests are very restricted both as to funding and personnel, and there would be a very lengthy and detailed amount of complicated work involved. The work load on Mr. MacKenzie himself and his FOI Section as to FOI matters alone appears heavy and continous, and he and others appear to have heavy duties as well in the field of archival and liaison work. The documents sought are plainly numerous and voluminous, the work alone of identifying, locating and collating them is itself of a significant order; and the work of dissecting and processing the material in regard to proper claims of exemption, I consider to have been shown to be onerous, complicated and lengthy. I am satisfied in the circumstances that the work involved in endeavouring to comply with the applicant's request would cause a substantial diversion of the resources of the agency from its other operations and that the diversion should in all the circumstances be regarded as unreasonable (even after having regard to the applicant's motivation in the public and her own interests).

For the reasons advanced above, I consider that the decision the subject of review should be affirmed. I should add that I find that no recordings on tapes such as Miss Shewcroft sought were in existence at the time of her requests.

I should like to be permitted to express the hope that further attempts might be made to have Miss Shewcroft agree to a modification of her requests, so that the unreasonable diversion of resources which I have found to be involved in their satisfaction, might be eliminated. To this end I propose to reserve liberty to apply.