32.
informational content or its connection with an event, person or circumstance within the private office of the Senator or member.
84 In the case of a Justice of the High Court or a judge of another court created by Commonwealth Parliament, the applicable functional unit is the "Federal court" of which the judge is a member. The records of a court in the regular course of its administration can be expected to be kept under the control of its registry insofar as those records concern the exercise of judicial power or its chief executive officer insofar as those records concern matters of administration. The mere fact that a document is created or received by a judge in the discharge of his or her functions of office does not mean that the document is a record of the court of which the judge is a member. That is so even if the document is kept within the chambers of the judge by reason of its informational content or by reason of its connection with a case that is or has been before the court. A memorandum sent from one judge to another expressing a view as to the merits of a case on which both are sitting is unlikely ever to become a record given that the limited purpose and confidential nature of the communication would make it improper for the recipient to retain the memorandum once the case had been determined. But even if the recipient chose to take it upon himself or herself to preserve the memorandum for posterity, the memorandum would not by reason of being so kept by a judge become a record of the court.
85 In the case of the Governor-General, the applicable functional unit of government is "the official establishment of the Governor-General". To the meaning of that expression, it is appropriate next to turn.
"the official establishment of the Governor-General"
86 The word "establishment" within the reference to "the official establishment of the Governor-General" in the definition of "Commonwealth institution" is evidently used in the arcane sense of referring to an organised staff provided at public expense for the assistance of the holder of a public office[1]. The word was used just once before in a Commonwealth statute in a cognate statutory expression in precisely that sense in the Governor-General's Establishment Act 1902 (Cth), which appropriated funds "[t]o assist in defraying the expenses of the Governor-General's establishment in connexion with the visit to Australia of Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York".
- ↑ The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed (1989), vol 5 at 405, senses 9 and 10.
