164 By virtue of the Foreign Corporations (Application of Laws) Act, X Corp thus became, for the purposes of s 57, the "person" required to comply with the reporting notice to the extent that it was capable of doing so.
165 X Corp has therefore failed to show that it was not required to respond to the reporting notice. It also necessarily follows that X Corp has not shown, on this ground, that the infringement officer did not have reasonable grounds to believe that X Corp had contravened s 57 of the Online Safety Act, which was the other main issue.
Analysis of the first alternative issue — the claimed extension of time within which to comply with the reporting notice
166 Section 56(2)(c)(ii) of the Online Safety Act (see [16] above) has the effect that the Commissioner may allow a longer period of time within which a provider of a service is to give a report to the Commissioner in response to a notice given under that section.
167 X Corp claims that on two occasions the Commissioner allowed a further period of time within which X Corp was required to comply with the reporting notice, which by its terms required compliance by 29 March 2023. The two occasions relied on by X Corp are cumulative, and were –
- (a) the email from the office of the Commissioner to Thomson Geer of 6 April 2023 which attached some clarifying questions, requesting a response by 24 April 2023 — see [31] above; and
- (b) the email from the office of the Commissioner to Thomson Geer of 26 April 2023 in response to X Corp's request for an extension of time within which to respond to the follow-up questions — see [34]–[36] above.
168 I infer, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that the Commissioner authorised the emails from her office of 6 and 26 April 2023. Indeed, the Commissioner was copied in on both emails, and the second email referred expressly to the Commissioner deciding to grant the extension.
169 However, the correspondence relied on by X Corp is not to be construed as amounting to the Commissioner allowing additional time within which X Corp was required to comply with the reporting notice. Commencing with the Commissioner's email of 6 April 2023 and its attachment, the terms of the email proceeded on the premise that the response to the notice had already been given. The email stated that the Commissioner's office had "reviewed … [the 29
