Murphy v Broken Hill City Council [2015] NSWCATAD 135

Civil and Administrative Tribunal New South Wales Medium Neutral Citation: Murphy v Broken Hill City Council [2015] NSWCATAD 135 Hearing dates: On the papers Decision date: 29 June 2015 Jurisdiction: Administrative and Equal Opportunity Division Before: J Kinross, Senior Member Decision: The decision that access is refused is set aside and a substitute decision is made Catchwords: ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW- access to information- whether overriding public interest against disclosure- competitive neutrality- whether an agency function-competitive commercial value-commercial-in-confidence-supply of confidential information-ability to manage the economy- reveal a deliberation of agency, Legislation Cited: Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 Local Government Act 1993 (NSW) Air Transport Act 1964 (NSW) Texts Cited: Competition Principles Agreement NSW Legislative Council Inquiry Report No 38 "NSW Regional Aviation Services and Government Response Category: Principal judgment Parties: Michael Murphy (Applicant) Broken Hill City Council (Respondent) Representation: M Murphy (Applicant in person) Broken Hill City Council (Self represented) File Number(s): 1410669 Publication restriction: Section 64 of the Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 2013 applies to those paragraphs of these reasons identified as '[not for publication]'. Those paragraphs are not to be released to the Applicant or the public.

REASONS FOR DECISION

Background 1. Access was sought to documents related to an agreement struck between Broken Hill City Council (Council) and Regional Express Airlines (REX), the sole aviation licensee on the Broken Hill intra-NSW air route, concerning use of the Council operated airport. 2. On 9 December 2014 the access applicant filed an application for administrative review seeking review of Council's 22 September 2014 decision to refuse access to documents on the basis that there is an overriding public interest against disclosure of the information: s58(1)(d) GIPA Act. Attached to his application was an 18 November 2014 IPC review of Council's decision. 3. After the application was filed with NCAT, Council purported to reconsider its decision and make a new decision pursuant to a further IPC recommendation. This 'decision' is dated 19 December 2014. This review takes account of this 'decision' along with the documents in dispute, statements of Ms Anne Johansson and annexures, a confidential statement of Ms Therese Manns and annexures, the review application and annexures and the statement of Mr Michael Murphy and the pages being reviewed. 4. One of the annexures to the statement of Ms Johansson is a schedule of documents referring by page number to a bundle of paginated pages. This decision adopts the same reference system.