Freedom of Information Amendment (Reform) Act 2010

A document is conditionally exempt if its disclosure under this Act would disclose information concerning a person in respect of his or her business or professional affairs or concerning the business, commercial or financial affairs of an organisation or undertaking, in a case in which the disclosure of the information:

would, or could reasonably be expected to, unreasonably affect that person adversely in respect of his or her lawful business or professional affairs or that organisation or undertaking in respect of its lawful business, commercial or financial affairs; or

could reasonably be expected to prejudice the future supply of information to the Commonwealth or an agency for the purpose of the administration of a law of the Commonwealth or of a Territory or the administration of matters administered by an agency.

Subsection (1) does not apply to trade secrets or other information to which section 47 applies.

Subsection (1) does not have effect in relation to a request by a person for access to a document:

by reason only of the inclusion in the document of information concerning that person in respect of his or her business or professional affairs; or

by reason only of the inclusion in the document of information concerning the business, commercial or financial affairs of an undertaking where the person making the request is the proprietor of the undertaking or a person acting on behalf of the proprietor; or

by reason only of the inclusion in the document of information concerning the business, commercial or financial affairs of an organisation where the person making the request is the organisation or a person acting on behalf of the organisation.

A reference in this section to an undertaking includes a reference to an undertaking that is carried on by, or by an authority of, the Commonwealth or a State or by a local government authority.

For the purposes of subsection (1), information is not taken to concern a person in respect of the person’s professional affairs merely because it is information concerning the person’s status as a member of a profession.

Access must generally be given to a conditionally exempt document unless it would be contrary to the public interest (see section 11A).