Harmonisation needed
Source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner, Australia
It is time to address the complexity of privacy regulation in Australia
Sydney: 20 December 2007
The Australian Privacy Commissioner on the 20th December 2007 submitted the Commissioners response to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Review of Privacy – Discussion Paper 72. The two-volume submission totalling 786 pages contains 64 chapters, which cover a wide variety of topics related to privacy.
The press release in announcing the submission states:
“The Australian Privacy Commissioner, Karen Curtis, has strongly endorsed making privacy laws in Australia consistent so that business, government and individuals can easily understand their rights and responsibilities.
"It is time to address the complexity of privacy regulation in Australia," Ms Curtis said.
"The current situation of different principles for government and business at the national level, and different State and national laws, creates unnecessary confusion for individuals and additional compliance costs on business.
"One set of privacy principles across the country and complementary State public sector legislation would go a long way to making the regulation of the handling of personal information within Australia more effective."”
The Australian Law Reform Commission opened the consultation on the Discussion Paper 72 (which contains 195 pages), Review of Australian Privacy Law, at the beginning of September 2007 and the consultation closed on the 7th December 2007.
The Queensland Government according to DP 72 raised the re-use of PSI.
The relationship between the PSI Re-use laws and the Privacy laws is an important area that requires harmonisation and further consideration with respect to how Privacy Commissioners and public sector information holders deal with re-use requests for PSI that happens to contain information on data subjects.
Related news topics of Australia responding to events in Europe:
Privacy Commissioner calls for mandatory reporting of major data security breaches