Lever and Australian Federal Police (Freedom of information)

This matter concerned an appeal by Mr Lever to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (the Tribunal) concerning a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Mr Lever sought access to documents, and the AFP had granted partial access, exempting certain information. The dispute centred on whether the exemptions applied by the AFP were justified.

The Tribunal was required to determine whether the information exempted by the AFP was properly classified as exempt under the *Freedom of Information Act 1982* (Cth). Specifically, the Tribunal considered whether the disclosure of the exempted information would involve the unreasonable disclosure of personal information, contrary to the public interest, or information irrelevant to Mr Lever's request. The Tribunal also considered whether the AFP had taken all reasonable steps to locate the requested documents.

Deputy President B W Rayment P found that while Mr Lever had pursued his FOI request with unusual vigour, the AFP had not established that this tendency was obsessive or that there was no need for him to contact certain individuals in the future. The Tribunal determined that the information on the confidential copy of Folio 6 was not sufficiently sensitive to outweigh the factors favouring access and ordered its release, including the material highlighted in yellow. However, for other folios (42, 148, 159, and 293), the Tribunal found the exempted information to be both sensitive and unrelated to Mr Lever, concluding that the public interest in disclosure was outweighed by the privacy interests of the officers concerned.

Consequently, the Tribunal set aside the AFP's exemption decision in relation to Folio 6, substituting it with a decision that the folio was not an exempt document under s 47F of the *Freedom of Information Act 1982* to the extent of the material in yellow. In all other respects, the Tribunal affirmed the AFP's exemption decisions.