Price and Department of Police

Price and Queensland Police Service
(1997 S0174, 29 October 2002) 

The applicant sought access to various categories of documents of the respondent which related to himself and others, including documents created in connection with his prior FOI access applications.  Part of the application was found by AC Shoyer to be invalid as it did not comply with s.25(2)(b) of the FOI Act.  Applying s.77(1) of the FOI Act, AC Shoyer refused to deal further with documents clearly excluded from the application of Part 3 of the FOI Act by s.12 of the FOI Act, or with documents that had been dealt with in previous decisions of the Information Commissioner or his delegates. 

AC Shoyer applied Ainsworth; Ainsworth Nominees Pty Ltd and Criminal Justice Commission; Others (1999) 5 QAR 284 in deciding that information which identified persons alleged to have committed some wrongdoing, or who were willing to provide information to police, was information concerning those persons' personal affairs.  AC Shoyer was not satisfied that the balance of the public interest favoured disclosure of that information, and he therefore decided that it was exempt from disclosure under s.44(1) of the FOI Act. 

AC Shoyer also upheld a claim for exemption by the respondent under s.41(1) of the FOI Act in respect of part of a written submission lodged with the Information Commissioner by the respondent in a previous case, which part had been accorded confidential treatment because of its extensive references to the content of the matter in issue in that previous case (which matter had been found to be exempt by the Information Commissioner).