Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I suspect that all members know where I am going, because the Privacy Act does provide protection for personal information that people hand over when they join an organisation. The expectation is that that information is needed for the organisation to be able to function or to be able to provide services to the person who is a member of that organisation. If the personal information is going to be used for other purposes or to be given to someone else, there is an obligation on that organisation to inform the individual at the time that they collect that information or to ask their permission.

For example, it might be of concern to some union members if their union were to collect personal details from its members and then give them to, for instance, a database company, like Magenta Linus, which can then match this up with other data about them, such as where they live and the electorate in which they live. They might be even more concerned if the union decided to hand the data to a market research company, like E-lect Interactive—

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