147 Lambton Quay
PO Box 805
15 September 2017
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
Brendon Woodhead
Phone +64 4 495 7200
Via email: [FYI request #6471 email]
Fax +64 4 495 7222
Website
www.dia.govt.nz
Dear Mr Woodhead
Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) request dated 23 August 2017 (ref.2017180074)
Thank you for your OIA request to the Department of Internal Affairs dated 23 August 2017. You
asked for:
“A copy of the lease for each Manukau Counties Community Facilities Charitable Trust venue,
namely Shiraz, Pitch Bar and Sound, Forge2, Boodles Licensed Café and Coyote Bar. The amount
of rent paid may be redacted. However, please do not redact the names of the parties and any
special conditions”.
The Department does not hold lease agreements for three of the five venues (Shiraz, Pitch Bar &
Sound, and Forge 2) as it was not a licensing requirement to provide this documentation until 2010.
For this reason I am refusing this part of your request under section 18(g)(i) as the information is not
held by the Department and I have no grounds for believing that the information is held by another
department, Minister of the Crown, or organisation.
I am withholding the requested information for the remaining two venues in its entirety under the
following sections of the OIA:
•
9(2)(b)(ii) – to protect information where the making available of the information would be likely
unreasonably to prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied or who is the
subject of the information; and
•
9(2)(ba)(i) – to protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence or which any
person has been or could be compel ed to provide under the authority of any enactment, where
the making available of the information would likely to prejudice the supply of similar
information, or information from the same source, and it is in the public interest that such
information should continue to be supplied.
The lease documentation for Boodles and Coyote Bar was provided to the Department as part of the
licensing process. The Department considers it necessary to withhold the deeds of lease documents
to protect commercially sensitive information contained within the document. We consider that the
disclosure of this information could weaken the negotiating power of both the landlord and tenants,
therefore harming their commercial positions.
The Department also considers these documents are subject to an obligation of confidence. The
information was provided to us as part of the licence application process with the expectation that it
would be used for its intended purpose and not released to other parties. While the Department can
require deeds of lease to be provided for licensing applications, we also rely on societies to provide
other high quality information for a number of different purposes, such as compliance. We consider
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