Disclaimer

General

The Office of the Information Commissioner seeks to publish up-to-date and accurate material on its website. The information on this website is not a substitute for independent professional advice. The Office of the Information Commissioner does not warrant that all information is correct or applicable to your individual circumstances and disclaims responsibility for any reliance on information without independent professional advice.

Despite our best efforts, we make no warranty that this website is free of infection by computer viruses or other contamination. We recommend that you use appropriate and up-to-date firewall and anti-virus software to protect your computer systems.

Decisions

From November 2017, the Office of the Information Commissioner will only publish its decisions in PDF format. Our decisions are also published on the AustLii website in html format generally within two weeks of the decision date. If you have trouble viewing a decision published on our website or the AustLii website and require an alternate format please contact us.

Decisions of the Information Commissioner may be appealed on a question of law to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT). QCAT decisions are available on their website.

Contact the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal

A decision may also be the subject of a judicial review to the Supreme Court of Queensland. Supreme Court decisions are available on their website.

Contact a courthouse of the Supreme Court of Queensland

Annotated legislation

The reprints used for the Office of the Information Commissioner’s annotated versions of the Freedom of Information Act 1992 (Qld) (FOI Act), RTI Act and IP Act (annotated legislation) are sourced from, and used with the permission of, the Office of The Parliamentary Counsel.   Although the Office of the Information Commissioner endeavours to ensure the text of the legislative provisions reproduced within the annotated legislation is current, we do not warrant its currency or accuracy.  Please consult the Office of The Parliamentary Counsel’s website for authorised current reprints of the legislation.

The annotated legislation deals with issues in a general way and is not legal advice.  The Office of the Information Commissioner carefully considers the specific circumstances arising in each external review.  Additional factors, which are not detailed in the annotations, may be relevant in specific circumstances.

The annotated legislation is updated from time to time to incorporate significant amendments and to reflect significant decisions.  The “Last updated” date indicates when any amendment was last made to the particular page of the annotated legislation; please note this does not mean that the annotated legislation has captured all legal developments as of that date.

Any summary of a decision included in the annotated legislation is not intended to be a substitute for the reasoning contained within the whole decision, and is not to be used as additional or different reasoning from the original decision.

Many of the legal concepts and principles explained and applied in decisions under the now repealed FOI Act may continue to be relevant when applying the RTI Act and IP Act.  Accordingly, the related links for RTI Act and IP Act annotations sometimes include links to FOI Act annotations.  Please note though that care needs to be taken in assessing the applicability of FOI Act decisions as the schemes of the RTI and IP Acts are quite different from that of the earlier Act.

Please note: the Office of the Information Commissioner developed the annotated legislation for use by its staff as part of the office’s commitment to proactively managing its knowledge resources.  We consider it a valuable resource and have therefore decided, in the interests of openness and transparency, to make it available for others to use.

Guidelines and Practice Notes

Guidelines and Practice Notes published on the Office of the Information Commissioner website are introductory only, and deal with issues in a general way. They are not legal advice and additional factors may be relevant in your specific circumstances. For detailed guidance legal advice should be sought.

OIC performance dashboard

While all care has been taken in presenting statistics on this site, the State of Queensland, acting through the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) does not warrant that the statistics are complete, accurate or current.

OIC expressly disclaims any liability for any damage resulting from the use of the material contained in this site and will not be responsible for any loss, howsoever arising, from use of or reliance on this information.

The statistics displayed on this site are for information purposes only. The statistics provided by OIC in the performance dashboard are subject to revision; therefore, statistics presented may differ from those displayed at an earlier time. This can occur as a result of corrections made to the data and/or additional information being added or edited for quality assurance purposes.