Price and Gatton Shire Council

Price and Gatton Shire Council
(2006 F0161, 5 June 2007) 

Sufficiency of search 

The applicant sought access to all documents (including tapes) that related to a letter to him from Gatton Shire Council (GSC). At the initial decision and internal review stages GSC released only the original letter to the applicant, claiming that no other documents existed. On external review GSC were requested to conduct further searches and inquiries, which resulted in the location of one additional document. This was released to the applicant. GSC also provided detailed information regarding how the letter came to be written and the searches and inquiries it had undertaken in an attempt to locate any documents that related to the letter.  

The applicant contended that further documents should exist that were responsive to his access application, specifically, records of telephone calls. He provided no substantive evidence that such additional documents existed and failed to identify any further searches or inquiries that GSC should reasonably be required to undertake that had not already been done.  

Based on the information provided by GSC, and the lack of evidence to the contrary, Assistant Commissioner Corby was satisfied that there were no reasonable grounds to believe that any further documents relating to the letter existed within the possession or under the control of GSC and that the searches and inquiries by GSC had been reasonable in the circumstances.