In a decision handed down on Wed 3.7.2013, the Full Federal Court has unanimously dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal from the decision in Collection Point Pty Ltd v FCT [2012] FCA 720 and confirmed that the Commissioner was not obliged to provide access to a document requested by the appellant under the FOI Act. The appellant, who was in the business of assisting clients to retrieve unclaimed moneys from various entities, sought a copy from the Commissioner of “the unclaimed superannuation money register”.
The issue in question turned on the interpretation of s 17(1)(c)(i) of the FOI Act which provided that an agency is able to produce a written document containing the requested information in discrete form for the purposes of an FOI request if it can use a computer “in a manner” that is ordinarily available to the agency to retrieve or collate stored information. However, in this case, in order for the Commissioner to provide the document requested, it would have been necessary to write a new computer program.
In upholding the decision at first instance, the Court found it had correctly rejected the appellant’s claim and, in doing so, confirmed that the need for a new computer program to enable the computer ordinarily available to the agency for retrieving or collating stored material to produce the requested document meant that the agency could not, by the use of a computer “ordinarily available”, produce the requested document.
(Collection Point Pty Ltd v FCT [2013] FCAFC 67, Full Federal Court, Besanko, Bromberg and Dodds-Streeton JJ, 3 July 2013.)
[LTN 126, 3/7/13]