RCP and Department of Child Safety

Application number:
210278
Decision date:
Thursday, Jan 31, 2008

 

RCP and Department of Child Safety
 (210278, 31 January 2008)

Section 44(1) Matter affecting personal affairs – name of putative father – shared personal affairs

The Department of Child Safety denied the applicant access to matter recording his putative father’s name and other identifying information in his adoption file.

Applying the principles identified in KBN and Department of Families, Youth and Community Care (1998) 4 QAR 422, Acting Assistant Commissioner Jefferies decided that the information concerned the shared personal affairs of the applicant and his putative father and was prima facie exempt under section 44(1) of the FOI Act, subject to the public interest balancing test.

In this instance, the public interest considerations in favour of disclosing the information to the applicant were not sufficient to outweigh the strong privacy interests of the putative father and his family, particularly as the putative father had not acknowledged paternity and the applicant’s birth mother was the only source of this information, which could not be verified as accurate.