Price and Surveyors' Board of Queensland

Application number:
1997 S0145
Decision date:
Thursday, Aug 26, 1999
Reported:
(1999) 5 QAR 110

Price and Surveyors’ Board of Queensland
(1997 S0145, 26 August 1999) 

This case raised an issue as to the proper construction of s.12 of the FOI Act which provides that: '... parts 3 and 4 [of the FOI Act] do not apply to the [Information] commissioner or documents of the [Information] commissioner'. 

Clearly, s.12 of the FOI Act intends that citizens shall not have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner for access to documents in the possession or under the control of the Information Commissioner.  However, that result could have been achieved by simply providing that Part 3 of the FOI Act does not apply to the Information Commissioner. 

The question then arises as to what was intended by the further provision that Part 3 of the FOI Act does not apply to documents of the Information Commissioner.  The Information Commissioner held that the logical construction of those words means that documents authored by the Information Commissioner (or his/her delegates), in the possession or control of another agency, are excluded from the application of Part 3 of the FOI Act by s.12, and hence that the applicant had no right to apply for, or obtain, access to documents of that kind in the hands of the respondent agency in the instant case. 

The Information Commissioner also decided that letters from third parties responding to consultation letters sent to them by the respondent agency under s.51 of the FOI Act were exempt under s.46(l)(a) of the FOI Act in the particular circumstances of the case.