New South Wales Consolidated Acts

WORKPLACE INJURY MANAGEMENT AND WORKERS COMPENSATION ACT 1998 - SECT 238AA

238AA Power to obtain information, documents and evidence

(1) An authorised officer may, by notice in writing served on a person who is, on reasonable grounds, believed by the authorised officer to be capable of giving information, producing documents or giving evidence in relation to a possible contravention of this Act or the 1987 Act or the regulations under those Acts require the person to do any one or more of the following things:

(a) to give an authorised officer, by writing signed by the person (or, in the case of a body corporate, by a competent officer of the body corporate) and within the time and in the manner specified in the notice, any such information of which the person has knowledge,

(b) to produce to an authorised officer, in accordance with the notice, any such documents,

(c) to appear before an authorised officer at a time and place specified in the notice and give either orally or in writing any such evidence and produce any such documents.

(2) A notice under this section must contain a warning that a failure to comply with the notice is an offence.

(3) An authorised officer may inspect a document produced in response to a notice under this section and may make copies of, or take extracts from, the document.

(4) An authorised officer may take possession and retain possession for as long as is necessary for the purposes of this Act, of a document produced in response to a notice under this section if the person otherwise entitled to possession of the document is supplied, as soon as practicable, with a copy certified by an authorised officer to be a true copy.

(5) A certified copy provided under subsection (4) is receivable in all courts as if it were the original.

(6) Until a certified copy of a document is provided under subsection (4), the authorised officer who has possession of the document must, at such times and places as the authorised officer thinks appropriate, permit the person otherwise entitled to possession of the document, or a person authorised by that person, to inspect the document and make copies of, or take extracts from, the document.

(7) In the section, "authorised officer" means a member of staff authorised by the Authority or the Nominal Insurer for the purposes of this section.

(8) A person must not:

(a) without reasonable excuse, refuse or fail to comply with a requirement under this section, or

(b) in purported compliance with a requirement under this section, give information or evidence or produce a document knowing it to be false or misleading in a material particular.

Maximum penalty: 100 penalty units.