Queensland Consolidated Acts

EVIDENCE ACT 1977 - SECT 105

105 Certified reproductions of certain official documents etc. to be admissible without further proof

(1) In this section—

"approved person" means—

(a) a person the Minister declares by gazette notice to be an approved person; or

(b) where an original document to which this section relates is a document filed in a court or the official record of a proceeding, the registrar or other proper officer of the court in which the document was filed or before which the proceeding took place.

(2) A person shall not fail or cease to be an approved person by reason only of a misdescription or an abbreviated description of a designated office by virtue of which the person would, but for the misdescription or abbreviated description, be an approved person, where the misdescription or abbreviation does not materially affect identification of that person.

(3) A document that purports to be a copy of an original document shall, without further proof, be admissible in evidence in a proceeding as if it were the original document of which it purports to be a copy, if it bears or is accompanied by a certificate, purporting to have been signed by an approved person, that it is a reproduction of a document that was in the custody or control of that person in the person’s official capacity—

(a) where the reproduction is a machine copy, at the time the machine copy was made; or

(b) where the reproduction is a print made from a transparency, at the time when the transparency was made.

(4) Where an approved person is served with legal process to produce a document to a court it shall be a sufficient answer to such process if the person to whom the process is addressed sends by post, or causes to be delivered, to the registrar or proper officer of the court requiring the production of the document a reproduction, certified as provided by this section, of the document and, where more than 1 document is specified howsoever in the legal process, further certifies, that, to the best of the person’s knowledge and belief, the reproductions so sent or caused to be delivered are reproductions of the whole of the documents in question.

(5) For the purposes of this section and without prejudice to any form of custody or control, an approved person shall be deemed to have custody or control of a document at the time the transparency of the document was made if—

(a) the person has custody or control of the transparency; and

(b) the transparency—

(i) incorporates a transparency of a certificate purporting to have been signed by an approved person to the effect that the transparency was made as a permanent record of a document in the custody or under the control of the person who signed the certificate; or

(ii) is 1 of a series of transparencies that incorporates, as part of the series, a transparency of such a certificate relating to the transparencies in the series.

(6) Division 3 of this part shall not apply to or in respect of a reproduction of a document referred to in this division.