Further evidence that The King’s School Council (the legal name of the school) disagrees with the Sydney Anglican Synod that non-disclosure agreements be sparingly used has been revealed in a Federal Court Judgment.
The case George v Council of the King’s School was settled, and the school was able to dismiss former headmaster Tony George. The latest judgment, however, saw the Council lose its attempt to keep confidential all the documents filed in the case.
While a non-disclosure agreement or court orders are somewhat different. the principle of being open and transparent as possible applies in both cases.
The School had asked the Federal Court to “suppress and prohibit the publication of all the documents that were filed by the parties and all of the information in those documents,” according to Judge Michael Wigney’s summary. “The ground upon which those orders were sought was that the orders were necessary to prevent prejudice to the proper administration of justice.”
Wigney J proceeded instead to apply the normal rules of the Federal Court, allowing documents used in open court to be available to third parties, such as the media. He allowed some minor redaction, such as the name of a certain legal practitioner, and to make sure a student would not be identified.
A long list of affidavits and submissions, which were not used in open court, remain confidential. Contrary to the Council’s submission that none of the documents in question had been used in open court, Wigney found that two had been.
“I am not satisfied that the Council has discharged the heavy onus of establishing that the wide-ranging suppression and non-publication orders it applied for are necessary to prevent prejudice to the proper administration of justice. As will be seen, however, it does not necessarily follow that non-parties will be able to access all the documents that were the subject of the proposed orders.” The judge’s reasoning was simply that the normal rules would prevent open access and that suppression and non-publication orders were not needed.