Privacy Act
What you need to know about the latest changes in the Australian privacy landscape
What's new
Updated 24 November 2022
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee delivered its Report on the Privacy Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill on 22 November 2022.
The report notes that overwhelming submissions to the committee supported stronger protections for the security of personal information, with comments describing the proposed amendments to the law as long overdue.
There were some submissions that argued the proposed penalty regime should adopt a tiered approach as is the case in the European regime. This would ideally take into consideration the size and nature of work of the organisation.
Ultimately the committee has welcomed the Australian government’s attention to modernising and strengthening Australian privacy law, accepting the proposed amendments and recommending its passage through Senate. The committee made two additional recommendations to be considered as part of the Privacy Act review – i.e. outside of the current bill’s scope. These were:
- amending section 13G of the Act to define the terms ‘serious’ interference and ‘repeated’ interference; and
- examining the appropriateness of section 5B providing for any additional ‘Australian link’.
Subject to the above recommendations, the committee recommended that the bill be passed.
What to know
What's next
Following the delivery of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee report on 22 November 2022, the legislative journey continues.
At this stage, it is unclear whether the government needs to make additional amendments to the bill as the committee’s recommendations were aimed at the broader review process, rather than the bill as it currently stands.
However, there are only seven more sitting days of parliament with a substantial legislative agenda including the landmark National Anti-Corruption Commission Bill. However, as per the committee’s report “the Attorney-General has a real interest in this area and certainly has expectations in terms of this review being finalised so that we can move to that next step”. We anticipate the Bill to pass in December 2022 or early 2023.
Organisations should consider their privacy and data protection activities in light of the current climate and new laws coming into force. In this article we suggest some key questions to ask to begin that process.
