Published on Office of the Information Commissioner Queensland (https://www.oic.qld.gov.au)

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Documents of an agency and documents of a Minister

The Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld) (RTI Act)1 applies to documents of an agency and documents of a Minister. This guideline will help decision makers identify when a document is a document of an agency or a document of a Minister.

Social media, webmail and text messages

For detailed guidance on dealing with these, refer to the guideline Online and on your phone: access applications for social media, webmail and text messages

What is a document?

Documents are not just paper. They include any other material with writing or meaningful marks, symbols or figures on it, and any disc, tape or other article from which images, writing or messages can be produced.2

Draft Documents

The RTI Act does not distinguish between draft documents and final documents.3If an in-scope document is a document of an agency (or of a Minister) it must be processed. Drafts cannot be excluded unless the applicant agrees.

Documents of an agency

Under the RTI Act an agency is a Queensland Government department, local government, or public authority. A document of an agency includes any document the agency is entitled to access or which is in the agency’s physical possession or legal control4, as long as it is not a document to which the RTI Act does not apply5.

Example

An agency is entitled to access:

  1. Documents provided to a legal services provider for the purposes of seeking advice.6
  2. An official work notebook or diary of an employee that the employee has taken outside the workplace, including for example, an employee on long service leave that has their work notebook or diary at home.
  3. Documents provided to an audit services provider for the purposes of an internal audit conducted by an external provider.
  4. Documents provided to a debt collector retained to recover monies owed to the agency.

In these cases, the agency must contact the person or organisation and retrieve the documents so they can process them as part of the application.

Documents of a Minister

Under the RTI Act a document of a Minister is a document which relates to the affairs of an agency and is in the Minister’s physical possession or legal control or one which the Minister is entitled to access7. It does not include a document of an agency or a document to which the RTI Act does not apply.

Ministerial obligations under the RTI Act continue if there is a change of Minister.8 Documents will continue to be documents of a Minister where there is a change of Minister without a change of government, however a change of Minister due to a change of government may require careful consideration.

Refer to Ministerial applications and machinery of government changes for more information.

Assistant Ministers

Minister in the RTI Act includes an Assistant Minister. Documents of an Assistant Minister can also be applied for under the RTI Act and Assistant Ministers are able to give directions under the RTI Act for their applications to be dealt with by another person.

A document of a Minister also includes a document in the possession, or under the control, of a member of staff of, or a consultant to, the Minister in the person’s capacity as member or consultant.9

Documents of an agency are not documents of a Minister

While document of a Minister includes a document the Minister is entitled to access, the definition explicitly excludes a document of an agency. Any documents in the possession of an agency are documents of that agency; they cannot be documents of a Minister, regardless of the Minister's entitlement to access them.

A document will relate to the affairs of an agency where it bears a direct or indirect relationship to:

  • the business and activities of an agency
  • the agency’s area of governmental responsibility; or
  • arrangements between government departments and other agencies and external entities.10

This means it is necessary to consider the kind of information the documents contain.

In Frecklington, MP and Premier and Minister for Trade (No. 2)11 (Frecklington No 2) the Commissioner considered whether a Ministerial staff member’s browser history related to the affairs of an agency. Browser history is an unintentionally and automatically generated list of URLs, being an unreliable record of resources accessed by a user, which may potentially contain times and dates but no detail of the information on the webpage visited.12 Having regard to the general character and content of web browser histories and their lack of ‘meaningful content’ the Commissioner13 did not consider the browser history requested by the applicant had any direct or indirect relationship to the affairs of an agency.

If the information does not relate to the affairs of an agency it will not be a document of a Minister, even if it is in the possession or control of the Minister or the Minister is entitled to access it. Examples include:

  • party political matters
  • matters related to the electorate
  • details of activities relating to the Minister’s activities as a Member of Parliament
  • details of activities relating to the Minister’s personal life or activities.

Examples

A Minister has several papers in a folder on their desk:

  1. A brief from the department about results of consultation conducted in relation to proposed legislation.
  2. The minutes of the last party political meeting.
  3. A draft response to a letter from a constituent in the Minister’s electorate about a matter related to a Commonwealth service.
  4. A consent form for the Minister’s child to go on a school excursion.
  5. A note of a phone message from a family member, including details of a personal appointment.

Only the first document relates to the affairs of the agency and is a document of the Minister. The rest do not, and cannot be applied for under the RTI Act.

Mixed documents

In the case of a mixed document, containing, for example, information related to both the Minister’s electorate and the affairs of the agency, it will be document of a Minister.

Archived Ministerial documents

The Public Records Act 2023 (Qld) provides for relevant public records to be transferred to State Archives when there is a change of Minister. If an applicant wishes to access these documents, they will need to apply to the department of which State Archives is part.

Consultation will be required if a decision is made to release information that is reasonably likely to be of concern to a third party. The need for consultation will need to be decided on a case by case basis, but possible third parties could include the former Minister, the current Minister of the former Minister's portfolio or the portfolio agency, or the leader of the former Minister's political party, depending on the nature of the documents.

Queensland Parliamentary Services may be of assistance with consulting former Ministers.14

Possession or control

A document is in the possession of an agency or Minister (or the Minister’s consultant or staff member) if it is in their physical possession.  A document is in the control of an agency or Minister if they have a legal right to control the document.15

Documents in the custody of State Archives are in possession of the agency

Under the Public Records Act 2023 (Qld) (PR Act), agencies can place documents in the custody of State Archives.

Under section 182 of the RTI Act and 191 of the IP Act, if the documents are not yet available from State Archives under the PR Act, for the purposes of the RTI Act they are deemed to be documents in the possession of the agency who lodged it with State Archives

If the agency that lodged the documents no longer exists, they are deemed to be in the possession of the agency whose functions most closely resemble those of the original agency, as long as that agency is entitled to access the documents from State Archives.

Applicants who wish to access those documents need to apply to the agency, not State Archives, and agencies will need to retrieve those documents if they receive an application for them.

This does not apply to documents of former Ministers lodged with State Archives. Access to those must be sought from the department in which State Archives is located. Refer to Documents of a former Minister for more information.

Revision Points (eDRMS)

Many Electronic Document Records Management Systems (eDRMS) include a functionality which shows the history of individual documents, for example a revision history, showing who has revised it and when. This functionality usually creates a snapshot of what the document looked like at a specific point in time, allowing the system to recreate a past version.

Doing so, however, does not retrieve an existing document; rather, it creates a new document, reconstructed from the data held in the revision history. As such, given RTI applications apply only to documents that exist on the day the application is made,16 these will generally17 not be in scope of an access application.

  • 1 With no application fee for applications limited to documents containing the applicant’s personal information.
  • 2 Schedule 1 of the Acts Interpretation Act 1954 (Qld)
  • 3  Public Records Act requirements distinguish between drafts and final versions of records, providing for different retention periods, but this is different from documents under the RTI Act.
  • 4 Section 12 of the RTI Act.
  • 5 As set out in Schedule 1 of the RTI Act.
  • 6 See Agency documents held by third party legal providers for more information.
  • 7 Section 13 of the RTI Act.
  • 8 Attorney-General (Cth) v Patrick [2024] FCAFC 126 (Patrick), considering when the status of a document as an official documents of a Minister is established under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth).
  • 9 Section 13(b) of the RTI Act.
  • 10 Frecklington, MP and Premier and Minister for Trade (No. 2)
  • 11 [2020] QICmr 26 (12 May 2020)
  • 12 Hon Tim Smith MP v Hon Daniel Andrews MP (Premier) (Review and Regulation) [2017] VCAT 340, adopted in Frecklington (No 2) (Smith v Andrews)
  • 13 Adopting the reasoning in Smith v Andrews)
  • 14 https://www.premiers.qld.gov.au/publications/categories/policies-and-codes/handbooks/ministerial-handbook.aspx
  • 15 See the Queensland Parliamentary Services website  for more information about how to contact a former Minister and how to search for a former Minister at https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Members/Former-Members/Contacting-Former-Members.
  • 16 See Y46 and Queensland Police Service [2020] QICmr 3 (4 February 2020) at paragraphs [42] – [47]
  • 17 Section 27 of the RTI Act.
  • 18 Note that the revision history would constitute metadata of the document. If someone applied for a document’s metadata under section 28 of the RTI Act (or 48 of the IP Act) and the document had a revision history, that revision history would need to be considered.

Current as at: July 1, 2025