The Privacy Act 1988 provides for the protection of personal information held by Commonwealth and Australian Capital Territory agencies and certain private sector organisations. Broadly speaking, the Privacy Act regulates the collection, use and disclosure, quality and security of personal information.
In addition, the Privacy Act, among other things, gives people the right to:
- know for what purpose their personal information is being collected
- know whether the collection of their personal information is required or authorised under law
- know to whom their personal information is usually disclosed
- access a record containing their personal information
- make amendments to their personal information to ensure it is accurate.
Your obligations
Information about a job seeker’s disability will often involve sensitive personal issues.
To encourage job seekers to be open with you about disability issues, you need to be able to assure them that any information they provide will be treated appropriately.
As a service provider, you are obligated to comply with the National Privacy Principles and the Information Privacy Principles which are contained in the Privacy Act. This means that you must:
- tell job seeker’s why you need to collect the information (i.e. to help look for work)
- tell job seeker’s what you will do with the information and who you will give it to (for example, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations)
- store the information securely
- only use the information for the purposes for which you obtained it
- only pass the information on when the law allows, when the job seeker has consented or the job seeker has been advised of the other parties to whom the information may be given
- provide a notice to job seekers, using appropriate language and formats, that fully informs them about why personal information about them is collected, what it is used for and to whom it is disclosed (this notice is known as an IPP 2 notice, because it is based on Information Privacy Principle 2).