Site Changes

On 1 November 2010 the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was integrated into the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and a new website established at www.oaic.gov.au.

Note 1: Major changes to the Privacy Act 1988 will come into effect in March 2014. Agencies, businesses and not for profits need to start preparing for these changes. For more information go to our privacy law reform page at www.oaic.gov.au
Note 2: From 12 March 2013 content is no longer being added to, or amended, on this site, consequently some information may be out of date. For new privacy content visit the www.oaic.gov.au website.

Privacy Regulations

The Governor-General issues regulations under s100 of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Two sets of regulations have been issued. They are:

Privacy (Private Sector) Regulations 2001

These regulations relate to various private sector provisions of the Privacy Act. They cover:

Small business operators treated as organisations (Privacy Act s 6E)
State authorities treated as organisations (Privacy Act s 6F)
Agencies to be treated as organisations (Privacy Act s 7A)
Privacy Codes - procedures relating to complaints ” prescribed standards (Privacy Act s 18BB)
Exceptions to National Privacy Principle 7.1 & 7.2 (use of Commonwealth identifiers)

For latest version see Comlaw.

Privacy Regulations 2006

The effect of the Privacy Regulations 2006 regulation is to exempt the secrecy provisions of the Census and Statistics Act 1905 from the provisions in relation to allowable disclosures during emergencies (Privacy Act - Part VIA). The regulations confirm that data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for statistical purposes is only used for statistical purposes.

For the latest version see Comlaw.