Who Falls In The Purview Of Australian Privacy Policies?

Protecting people’s privacy has always been a mandate in a great business. Various researches prove that public is more likely to trust an organization that maintains high standards of trust and values privacy of its clients.

Following are the areas that regulates under the Australian Privacy Principles -

1. Public Sector: The National Privacy Act covers any federal and Australian Capital Territory (ACT) government agencies that have been under the government contracts, majorly the commonwealth government contract.
   
   

   

2. Private sector: It includes all private businesses and non-government organizations having a turnover, which exceeds 3 million dollars.

• The businesses that sell or purchase information without the legal consent of the individual and also the one’s where there is no legal authorization of disclosure of personal information.
• All the private schools that have an annual turnover exceeding 3 million dollars
• Private organizations offering health services
• Credit reporting agencies handling the credit, providing information of an individual also fall in this act regardless of what their annual turnover to be
• All the private universities in Australia follow the guidelines marked under the privacy act.
• Any person handling your tax file, including your personal property registers

3. Small businesses: If you own a small business with annual earnings of 3 million or less, the National Privacy Policy is also applicable to you. The office of Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) follows a privacy checklist for all the small business enterprises dealing in:

• Personal information of people in Australia
• A contractor that is entitled to provide services under the commonwealth government contract
• A business dealing with Anti-terrorism or Anti-Money Laundering.
• People operating in residential tenancy

We live in an advanced digital age that has led to a number of changes especially the way we need to think about our privacy, with the electronic media being extremely vulnerable and fluid, a lot of information get copied, aggregated, interlinked, transmitted, etc. Thus, to safeguard the interests and personal information of the citizens in Australia, these laws are in force and adhered in first place.