Dear VIC Department of Transport,

The department has engaged as private contractors, barristers of the Victorian Bar using public funds to defend appeals filed against Vicroads and heard in open court. These requests relate specifically to Magistrates Court (MCV) at Sunshine.

I am seeking please under FOI:

1.a) the hire contracts entered into between the barristers & the department if a standard contract; OR

1b) if not standard, the specific contracts between the Department & barrister Mr Bryn Overend for appearances on 29 March 2023 & 5 June 2023 re court number P10526187; AND

2. Any/All documents pertaining to the amounts billed by the abovenamed barrister and paid by the department including but not limited to dates of payments and amounts paid; AND

3. Any/All communications between Mr Bryn Overend & Mr Francis To (in-house lawyer at the department) or any other public sector employee or contractor in relation to the defence of the abovenumbered matter; AND

4. Any/All internal communications involving the secretary of the dept or department delegates/employees/contractors and pertaining to the running or defending of appeals at MCV or other courts or in general re matters filed against Vicroads.

Thank you for your assistance

Yours faithfully,

Drew Scott, Esq. LLB BCom GradDipLP

Dear Transport FOI Requests (DOT),

Thank you for your prompt response. The link you have given requires one to begin an FOI request from scratch as far as I can tell, in order to reach the payment page to which you referred. I see no option to pay for this request without duplicating and replacing it, unless my fee counts for both? Is there a way to apply for the waiver or to pay the fee independent of making a rival application on that website you linked us to, such as by pasting a reference to the link of my request here, and then just paying the fee, or applying for the waiver? And which option would I select for receipt of documents when I want neither of those?

That application form as I have been able to determine, necessarily redirects publication of the FOI requested documents away from this publicly accessible page, relegating any future fulfilment to the mailing address of the applicant (which I do not have) or to an inspection on government property supervised by a public servant at a commensurate supervision fee, with possible eligibility to make copies of the requested documents also at a fee, but no guarantee of permission being granted to do so.

Thus the linked process which was suggested as the mechanism by which an applicant could make payment, appears instead to render this website and my request on here, wholly redundant (I see many other requests appear to have shared the fate of mine). Have I assessed the process at the destination to your link correctly? (If not I apologise and kindly request your clarification as to how I might pay for this request here).

Thanking you in advance.
Drew Scott, Esq. LLB BCom GradDipLP

Dear Transport FOI Requests (DOT),

I have applied for and was granted the fee waiver via the link you sent me. Your ref CS013468a

I did not re-write my request but simply linked to it here In the hope the reply would be posted here. It was not.

Would you please kindly post your acceptance and validation email here so that I may respond underneath it with the information you need? I also would like to name another vic bar barrister and court matter and list another court date being 12 October 2023, so to include all material to date including tomorrow. At the time I wrote the request which was a long time ago, I did not comprehend how to navigate the fee process using both websites.

Thanks for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Drew Scott, Esq. LLB BCom GradDipLP

Dear VIC Department of Transport,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of VIC Department of Transport's handling of my FOI request 'Hire contracts & records of payments of public money (dates & amounts) made to Victorian Bar member'.

There were, in my humble opinion, bad faith reactions made for invalid reasons. All email correspondences were blank and even the parties who were writing to each other were blanked out too. There are no acceptable grounds for this.

Even more outrageously, the second invoice from the barrister, unlike the first, has everything redacted except the total. Again, there are no valid grounds for same. Sure the public would love to know and you would love to tell them just what it is the department is paying thousands of dollars for a private barrister to do on behalf of the Victorian people in this matter? All policy decisions, advices, instructions to counsel, should all be in support of the public and an open agenda and mission. If the defence is being run for some vexatious purpose, that does not create valid grounds for concealment of same, imho. Redactions are for legitimate purposes, none of which can be related to this matter.

Most of the document pages consisted of an attachment I already received directly. Should you continue to refuse to provide something which resembles lawful discharge of FOI obligations, I will subpoena them to be tendered in open court on the public record.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/h...

Yours faithfully,

Drew Scott, Esq. LLB BCom GradDipLP