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48.

correspondence with the Monarch"[1]. By contrast, the Education Committee concluded that the total exemption of, inter alia, a Governor-General's documents was "acceptable on the grounds of preserving the traditional independence of [those] arms of government from the executive"[2]. As re-introduced in 1981, the Archives Bill retained the total exemption for a Governor-General's records[3] but lapsed.

133 In 1983, the Archives Bill was re-introduced in the form of the present Act, providing that records of the official establishment of the Governor-General are subject to the open-access requirements, but without any indication of an intention to include personal records of the Governor-General, including the special category of correspondence between the Governor-General and the Queen. To the contrary, as Senator Evans observed in his Second Reading Speech[4], the 1983 Bill was "chiefly designed to replace existing ad hoc decisions and conventions which have been relied upon for the last thirty years" and thus the provisions of the legislation would "apply to the records of the official establishment of the Governor-General, but not to his private or personal records".

Personal communications and official records

134 At common law, the fact of control of a chattel, as of land, is prima facie evidence of the right to exercise such control[5]. Hence, just as a person who takes the profits or product of land is presumed to have lawful possession of the land[6], a person who holds or writes on a document is presumed to have lawful possession

  1. ↑ Australia, Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, Freedom of Information (1979) at 339 [33.22]-[33.23].
  2. ↑ Australia, Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts, Report on the Archives Bill 1978 (1979) at 19 [5.16].
  3. ↑ cl 18(1)(a).
  4. ↑ Australia, Senate, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 2 June 1983 at 1183, 1184.
  5. ↑ Wilbraham v Snow (1670) 2 Wms Saund 47 at 47 n (1) [85 ER 624 at 628]; Robertson v French (1803) 4 East 130 at 136–137 per Lord Ellenborough CJ [102 ER 779 at 782]; Jeffries v Great Western Railway Co (1856) 5 El & Bl 802 at 806 per Lord Campbell CJ, 806 per Wightman J [119 ER 680 at 681]; Russell v Wilson (1923) 33 CLR 538 at 546 per Isaacs and Rich JJ; Gatward v Alley (1940) 40 SR (NSW) 174 at 178–180 per Jordan CJ.
  6. ↑ See Finlaison, Wills on the Law of Evidence in Civil and Criminal Cases, 3rd ed (1938) at 62–63.
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