By Michael Palfrey and Will Sharpe
The Federal Court decision in Collection Point Pty Ltd v
Commissioner of Taxation provides guidance for Commonwealth
agencies about meeting their obligations under the Freedom of
Information Act 1982 (Cth) (FOI Act) when dealing with data
contained on their computer systems. The request for access, in
this case, was to written documents that didn't exist. To
create those documents the agency would have to create a computer
program to extract the material. The Court held that this meant
that a computer was not "ordinarily available" to collate
or retrieve the information and, therefore, the document did not
need to be produced.
The case
Marshall J heard an appeal from a decision of the Administrative
Appeals Tribunal affirming a decision of the ATO to refuse access
to material sought by Collection Point under the FOI Act. Although
the matter was determined under the pre-reform FOI Act, the terms
of the relevant provision is
