VCAT has confirmed that applicant’s cannot amend FOI requests during an OVIC review. That means that they cannot tell OVIC that they are now willing to get partial access. An applicant must be held to the terms of the original request and any decision by OVIC must be in relation to the original request: Davies v Victoria Police [2022] VCAT 713, [91]-[92].
This effectively means that OVIC cannot seek to persuade applicants to seek partial access during a review when the did not seek partial access from the agency making the decision under review.