The Bill is the first tranche of the Government’s privacy reforms with further reforms expected.

Key recommendations, endorsed by the Government in the Bill are:

• Enhancing the powers of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to give additional powers to investigate breaches and issue infringement notices that will attract civil penalties. The OAIC will also be required to develop a children’s online privacy code.
• Requiring businesses to take ‘reasonable technical and organisational steps’ to protect personal information and to include information in privacy policies about the use of AI, where the rights and interests of individuals are significantly affected.
• The right for individuals to sue businesses where there has been a serious invasion of privacy, which includes misuse of personal information. It will provide a new avenue for aggrieved individuals to take direct action against businesses for misuse of their personal information.
• For organisations transferring customer data overseas, (e.g. Australian companies reporting to an overseas parent company) the Government can prescribe countries which have equivalent privacy protections as Australia, which will provide greater clarity for affected businesses.

What’s missing?

Two key recommendations were excluded from this tranche of legislative change – the phasing out of the small business exemption and the removal of the employee records exemption from the Act. Given that these significant changes are likely to be included in future reforms, and the intense public interest in privacy and protection of personal information, we recommend affected businesses take this opportunity to review the maturity level of their privacy and data protection procedures and policies.

What’s next

The Bill has been referred to a Senate committee to scrutinise the proposed legislation and receive evidence from interested parties and other stakeholders, with a possible reporting date of 14 November 2024. With only limited Parliamentary sitting dates before the end of 2024,  the prospect of the Bill passing both the House of Representatives and the Senate before the end of this year is in doubt. The timing of the federal election, due in 2025 may also influence the progress of the Bill and the introduction of further tranches of reforms.

We will continue to track the progress of the Bill and keep you updated. In the meantime, please reach out if you would like to discuss any of these proposed reforms, or whether your current policies and procedures require review.