Administrative law

Developments in administrative law

On 1 January 2015, the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) marked 12 months as the State's first 'super tribunal' and, in March 2015, released its first strategic plan: NCAT Strategic Plan 2014-2018. The strategic plan identifies priority areas which are intended to provide the framework for NCAT's development over the next five years.

On 15 January 2015, the Information and Privacy Commission NSW (IPC) released a report on the operation of the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (NSW) (GIPA Act) for 2013 - 2014. The Report provided a general examination of all four information release pathways (i.e. mandatory release, authorised release, informal release and access applications), and collected data across five government sectors (i.e. NSW Government agencies, State-owned corporations and Ministers, Universities and local Councils). The Report provided a statistical analysis on how the GIPA Act is being implemented and complied with in those sectors. In a further development involving the GIPA Act, on 1 July 2015, the IPC launched the much anticipated 'IPC GIPA Tool', which is a free cloud based and fully supported internet application. The IPC GIPA Tool is intended to assist all NSW Government agencies and organisations which are regulated by the GIPA Act to comply with the legislation when processing and reporting on government information access applications.

A number of administrative law cases were decided by the NSW Court of Appeal. These include Bahramy v Medical Council of New South Wales [2015] NSWCA 384 (whether the tribunal had jurisdiction to make orders), Hunter Development Corporation v Save Our Rail NSW Incorporated...