Who is covered by Commonwealth privacy laws?
In an employment context, the Privacy Act protects the privacy of personal information of Commonwealth and ACT public sector employees and certain private sector employees. In certain cases, individual job applicants and employees may complain of a breach of privacy to the Privacy Commissioner who can investigate the complaint, conciliate the complaint and make recommendations should the complaint prove unable to be resolved by conciliation. These recommendations can be enforced by the federal courts. However, the private sector provisions only apply to organisations (including not-for-profit organisations) with an annual turnover of more than $3 million, with certain limited exceptions (see http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/IS12_01.html). States and territories also have privacy laws and administrative schemes which operate to the extent that they are not indirectly inconsistent with the Privacy Act.14 These vary in content and coverage, especially in regard to private sector cov
