Baumgarten and eSafety Commissioner

This matter came before Senior Member A Poljak of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal concerning an application by the applicant to issue summonses to the eSafety Commissioner. The dispute arose from the applicant's request for the Tribunal to exercise its discretion under subsection 40A(1)(b) of the *Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975* (Cth) to issue summonses compelling the production of various documents and categories of documents by the Commissioner. The Commissioner objected to the issue of these summonses.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether it should exercise its discretion to issue the requested summonses, and conversely, whether it should exercise its discretion under subsection 40A(2) of the AAT Act to refuse the applicant's request. This determination was to be made in the context of the sole question then before the Tribunal, which was a jurisdictional question. The Tribunal was required to consider the relevance of the documents sought by the applicant to this jurisdictional question and whether the request constituted an attempt to engage in a "fishing expedition" or pursue a broader agenda unrelated to the immediate proceedings.

The Tribunal reasoned that for a summons to be issued, the documents sought must be relevant to the issues before the Tribunal and capable of shedding light on those issues. In this instance, the Tribunal found that each of the eight categories of documents sought by the applicant was either irrelevant to the jurisdictional question, had already been produced, was not in the Commissioner's possession, or was too vaguely described. For example, correspondence with the complainant and internal correspondence concerning the complaint were largely addressed by documents already provided. Other categories, such as general policy documents or records unrelated to the specific complaint, were deemed not relevant to the jurisdictional question. The Tribunal concluded that the request was not sufficiently relevant to the jurisdictional question and risked becoming an impermissible fishing expedition.

Consequently, pursuant to subsection 40A(2) of the AAT Act, the Tribunal refused the applicant's request to issue the summonses to the eSafety Commissioner.