On 23 May 2012, the Commonwealth Government introduced its
legislation to implement the first stage of its reforms to
Australia's privacy laws. The Privacy Amendment (Enhancing
Privacy Protection) Bill was introduced into Parliament after
a lengthy consultation and review process, by the Australian Law
Reform Commission, the government and a number of Senate
committees. We have previously written about the
proposals for change.
This is the first stage of the Government's responses to 197
of the ALRC's 295 recommendations on changes to Australian
privacy law and practice.
The Bill if implemented will do the following:
- Create a unified set of Australian Privacy Principles (APPs)
that will act as a single set of rules applying to Commonwealth
agencies and private sector organisations. The APPs will replace
the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) for the private sector and
the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) for the public
sector.
