Price and Department of Police

Price and Queensland Police Service
(1995 S0188, 18 December 2000) 

This case concerned documents relevant to court action involving the applicant, certain third parties and the respondent agency.  The Information Commissioner found that the matter in issue was exempt under s.41(1), s.44(1) or s.46(1)(b) of the FOI Act. 

The applicant also raised a 'sufficiency of search' issue. Applying the principles stated in Shepherd and Department of Housing, Local Government and Planning (1994) 1 QAR 464, the Information Commissioner decided that in respect of most of the large number of categories of documents referred to by the applicant, there were no reasonable grounds to believe that additional documents falling within the terms of the relevant FOI access application existed in the possession or control of the QPS.  In those cases where there was some basis to believe additional documents may have existed, the Information Commissioner found that the search efforts by the QPS to locate any such documents had been reasonable in all the circumstances of the case.