Exchange of information
55 Exchange of information
A person who has, or has access to, information obtained in the course of the administration of this Act may disclose that information to —
a person who is a member of the Police Force; or
a person employed in the department of the Public Service principally assisting in the administration of the Police Act 1892,
for the purposes of the performance of an official function.
Without limiting other ways in which a disclosure may be made, information may be disclosed under subsection (1) by adding the information directly into a database that is accessible only to persons to whom the information may be disclosed in accordance with this Act.
A person who is an authorised person or a security officer may, in order to obtain information to facilitate the performance of the person’s functions in that capacity under this Act, request —
a person who is a member of the Police Force; or
a person employed in the department of the Public Service principally assisting in the administration of the Police Act 1892,
(the person requested) to disclose to the person making the request any information of a kind described in the request that the person requested has, or has access to, in an official capacity.
Information the disclosure of which is requested under subsection (3) may be, but is not required to be, disclosed in accordance with the request.
This section does not authorise a person who is not an employing authority to —
disclose information, whether under subsection (1) or in response to a request under subsection (3); or
under subsection (3), request the disclosure of information,
except with the approval of the person’s employing authority.
An employing authority’s approval under subsection (5) may apply to a particular disclosure of specified information or may apply generally as specified in the approval.
Instead of the relevant employing authorities respectively approving of a person making a request under subsection (3) for the disclosure of information and approving of the disclosure of information in response to a request under that subsection, the employing authorities may approve of the disclosure of information to a person who could make the request by giving the person access, through a computer database or other collection of information, to information of the kind that could be requested.
The authority given by this section to disclose, or to approve the disclosure of, information applies even though the disclosure may be contrary to any duty of confidentiality imposed by law or otherwise arising and whether or not the duty of confidentiality arose before this section commenced but, without limiting the authority given by this section to disclose information, a person to whom confidential information is disclosed under this section is bound by the same duty of confidentiality as applied to the person making the disclosure.
A person making or approving a disclosure under this section incurs no civil or criminal liability as a result of doing so, and is not to be regarded for any purpose as being in breach of the duty of confidentiality because of the disclosure.
In this section —
employing authority has the meaning given to that term in the Public Sector Management Act 1994 section 5 except that, for the purposes of this section, the Commissioner of Police is to be regarded as the employing authority of a member of the Police Force.
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