Response to the Privacy Act Review Report

1.    The Queensland QCCL for Civil Liberties (“the QCCL”) is a not-for-profit organisation that promotes civil liberties and receives queries from members of the public regarding their civil liberties and individual rights.

2.    We make this submission in response to the Privacy Act Review Report (“the Report”).

3.    We consider that the Report is an important step towards proper protection of Queenslanders’ right to privacy and enhanced transparency of Government. In summary of our submission in response to the review of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) we submitted as follows:

a.    A statutory tort for serious invasion of privacy should be introduced.

b.    The definition of personal information ought to be expanded.

c.     The small business exemption should be updated to bring all businesses into line with the core requirements of the Australian Privacy Principles.

d.    The employee records exemption should be removed.

e.    The political parties exemption should be removed.

f.      The journalist exemption should be amended to widen the definition of journalist and apply in circumstances where the journalist is required to establish that practice the profession of journalism and that they or the publisher have bound themselves to comply with an appropriate code of practice dealing with privacy.

g.    The concept of ‘consent’ requires further consideration and clarification.

h.    A right to be forgotten, which more appropriately deals with the right to free speech should be introduced be along these lines:

                                    i.     It would only include the right to have information that a person as an internet user originally created or made available (a person’s Facebook profile, email contacts, photos, etc) rather than to information created by others based on publicly available information about a user.

                                   ii.    right would require government regulation to prevent users from signing over rights to their own information as part of the terms of use of social networks and other web services.

                                  iii.    right could be coupled with the ability of users to recover monetary damages for reputational harm for information released that was intended to be private or after they have indicated that the information should be forgotten.

i.      A statutory tort for serious invasion of privacy should be introduced.

4.    We commend the Report as it addresses our submission and, in our view, is a significant and positive step towards the proper recognition and protection of Australians’ right to privacy.

5.    We look forward to responding to the further consultation processes foreshadowed in the Report and, in a general sense, support the recommendations in the Report being formed into an exposure draft of a Bill to implement those recommendations into law without delay.

6.    Please do not hesitate to contact us should you require any further information.

Your sincerely,

Angus Murray, Vice-President

For and on behalf of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties