1. A party to a proceeding in the Federal Court is entitled under Rule 2.32 of the Federal Court Rules 2011 to inspect any document in the proceeding except:
- a document for which a claim for privilege has been made but not yet decided by the Court or that the Court has decided is privileged; or
- a document that the Court has ordered is confidential.
2. A party to a proceeding may however apply, under Rule 2.32(4), to the Court or a Judge for leave to inspect a document that the party is not otherwise entitled to inspect.
- a transcript of the proceeding; or
- a document filed in the proceeding to support an application for an order that a document, evidence or thing is privileged from production.
3. A party to a proceeding may under Rule 2.32(5) with the permission of the Registrar, copy any document which that party is entitled to inspect (except the transcript in the proceeding) provided any copy fee prescribed by the Federal Court of Australia Regulations 2004 has first been paid.
4. If there is no order that a transcript is confidential, a party may obtain a copy of the transcript in a proceeding from the Court’s transcript provider. For more information about access to transcript see the Party Access to Transcript section of this website.
5. A fee is payable for any request for a copy or copies of any document or documents and additional fees are payable for each page copied (see item 20 of Schedule 1 to Federal Court of Australia Regulations 2004), although these may be exempted in some circumstances. For information about any such exemption see the Exempted or Reduction of Fees section of this website.
6. In order to inspect and copy a document or documents, a party must contact a District Registry and may need to complete an application form available from the Registry. Contact details for each Registry including physical addresses, telephone, fax and email details can be found in the Contact the Court section of the website.
7. Some documents in particular types of proceedings, for example examinations under the Corporations Act 2001 and Bankruptcy Act 1966, are not available for inspection by anyone without an order of the Court.
March 2011 (updated August 2011)
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