Overview

This profile supplements the separate Privacy guide.

It offers a more detailed analysis of Australian federal and state/territory privacy legislation and industry codes, including federal Privacy Act coverage of government/nongovernment entities and provisions in other legislation regarding archives, spent convictions and medical data. It also includes developments in New Zealand.

     in this profile

The following pages cover -

Clth agencies - legislation and operational aspects of how the Privacy Act affects Commonwealth government agencies

other aspects - privacy provisions in the Telecommunications, Archives and other legislation, along with medical research codes of practice

private sector - how the Commonwealth legislation covers private sector organisations (and which ones)

State regimes - state and territory legislation and protocols

industry codes - industry codes of practice, of varying degrees of stringency or credibility

chronology - a timeline with highlights of privacy law development in Australia, including the Victoria Park Case and the 1988 Act

Our Censorship guide includes a page discussing official secrets and freedom of information legislation in Australia and overseas. The separate Surveillance & Identification profile includes a discussion of media self-regulation and community attitudes regarding the personal lives of 'public' figures.

     orientation

Privacy protection, like most information law in Australia, is an uneasy mix of federal legislation, state/territory legislation and industry codes of practice that on occasion receive only lip-service from major organisations such publishers, broadcasters or direct marketers.

As we've noted in the Privacy guide, the Australian constitution does not feature explicit protection for privacy and in November 2001 the High Court commented that aspects of the 1930s Victoria Park decision - the landmark common law case - must have seemed anachronistic even at the time they were made.

The development of Australian law and practice that effectively addresses the digital environment has accordingly involved the uneven accretion of legislation and protocols, usually on a reactive basis and often with considerable variation across the country's jurisdictions. Overall, development has moved outwards from regulation of government practice (in particular dealing with taxation and other financial transactions) to embrace medical data handling and - most recently - the activity of some private sector entities. The adequacy of recent changes has been seriously questioned by Australian business and consumer groups and by overseas observers, in particular regarding the legislation's failure to keep pace with the EU Data Protection Directive.

Implementation of the new legislation is uncertain and, as the High Court observed, it is likely that that ongoing pressure within/outside Australia from business, consumers and entities will result in significant further changes to the main federal legislation and to codes dealing with media and marketing activity.





   next page (Commonwealth agencies)