Price and Surveyors' Board of Queensland

Application number:
1997 S0027
Decision date:
Friday, Oct 24, 1997
Reported:
(1997) 4 QAR 181

Price and Surveyors Board of Queensland
(1997 S0027, 24 October 1997) 

 

The issues for determination in this review were: 

(1)   whether the respondent was entitled to refuse the applicant's request that he be given access to the respondent's offices, with his own photocopier, to personally photocopy documents to which he had been granted access; and

(2)   whether charges were payable by the applicant for the provision to him of photocopies of the documents to which the applicant had been granted access. 

Issue (1): Requested form of access 

The Information Commissioner found that requiring an agency to provide an applicant for access with a requested document, so that the applicant could make a photocopy of the document using his or her own photocopier, was not a form of access contemplated or provided for by the FOI Act, and therefore was not a form of access which the applicant was entitled to require of the respondent.  The Information Commissioner considered that the use of the word 'providing' in the phrase 'providing a copy of the document', in s.30(1)(b) of the FOI Act, was consistent only with the relevant agency making a copy of a document in its possession, and providing that copy to the applicant for access. 

Issue (2): Imposition of charges 

The Information Commisioner held that s.7 of the Freedom of Information Regulation 1992 Qld (the FOI Regulation) requires an assessment of whether a document to which access has been requested contains some information which can be properly characterised as information concerning the personal affairs of the applicant for access.  If so, it will be a document that concerns the applicant's personal affairs, and no charge will be payable for access to the document, by virtue of s.7(2) of the FOI Regulation.  If not, it will be a document that does not concern the applicant's personal affairs, and the applicant must pay any charge that is prescribed for obtaining access to the document (see s.7(1) of the FOI Regulation). 

The Information Commissioner determined that the applicant was not required to pay a photocopying charge for one of the pages remaining in issue as it formed part of a document which contained at least some matter which concerned the applicant's personal affairs.  The Information Commissioner determined that the balance of the documents remaining in issue did not contain any information which would be properly characterised as information concerning the applicant's personal affairs, and hence access charges were payable.