The Australian Government has published an issues paper outlining and seeking feedback on the Privacy Act 1988 (the "Act") and other Australian laws protecting personal information, with submissions on a series of 68 questions due by 29 November 2020 (the "Issues Paper").
It will then prepare and release a discussion paper including possible options for reform early next year. This is likely to be the most significant reform to the Act since the 2014 reforms which introduced the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and a reworked credit reporting scheme.
The Issues Paper follows the Government’s December 2019 announcement that it would conduct a review of the Act as part of its response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's Digital Platforms Inquiry (DPI) report. We published a detailed overview of the DPI’s privacy recommendations and Government response earlier this year, comparing key recommendations to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the 2008 Australian Law Reform Commission report on Australian privacy law (ALRC Report).
The new Issues Paper largely restates/summarises findings and recommendations in the DPI, as well as referencing earlier reports such as the ALRC Report. The ALRC Report ultimately led to the 2014 Privacy Act reforms described above, however many of the ALRC’s recommendations were not responded to by the Government or received in-principle support but were never implemented.
You can access our summary table setting out some of the key topics and issues raised in the Issues Paper here.
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