17.
ensure full and frank private discussions designed to effect the settlement of, for example, an industrial dispute.
47 Accordingly, the only documents which courts and specified tribunals, authorities and bodies are obliged to open to increased public scrutiny are those documents relating to the management and administration of registry and office resources.
48 Whilst the proper construction of s 6A(1) plainly emerges from a consideration of the textual and contextual matters discussed, that construction is fortified by resort to statements in relevant secondary materials.
49 In brief, s 6A(1) of the FOI Act, which was inserted in 1984, drew upon the language of ss 5(1) and 6, which were included in the FOI Act as originally enacted. In the relevant parliamentary debates, Senator Evans described the operation of ss 5 and 6 and explained their object. He said[1]:
"courts, judicial offices, certain industrial tribunals and their registries … are not exempt from the operation of the [FOI] Act so far as their administrative procedures, properly so-called, are concerned."
50 The Senator went on to explain that the inclusion of ss 5 and 6 would secure a legitimate public interest in "efficient administration" and was not intended to intrude on the independence of the judiciary[2].
51 In Bienstein[3], the respondent denied the applicant's request for access to all documents relating to the case management of her matters before it. It was decided in Bienstein that ss 5 and 6 of the FOI Act were not intended to extend so far as requiring the giving of access to documents that would put judicial independence, or the independence of other institutions, at risk [4]. However, it was also decided that the verbiage "relates to matters of an administrative nature", as it occurs in s 5 of the FOI Act, can include documents relating to judicial functions and decision-making. The next step in the reasoning was that documents which would not impinge on the independence essential to the
