The Bill amends the Privacy Act 1988 to implement an initial tranche of reforms arising from the proposals of a review of the Privacy Act published in 2023. The Government’s response to the review accepted or accepted-in-principle most of the review’s proposals.

Key reforms in the Bill include:

• establishing a Children’s Online Privacy Code
• creating a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy
• new powers for the Minister to direct the Commissioner to develop and register Australian Privacy Principles (APP) codes and conduct public inquiries
• a new civil penalty for acts and practices which interfere with the privacy of individuals (but which fall below the threshold of ‘serious’) and a civil penalty infringement notice scheme for specific APP and other obligations.

Key points

• More controversial proposals from the Privacy Act review, such as removing an exemption for small businesses, have not been implemented in the Bill.
• The Criminal Code Act 1995 will also be amended to introduce two offences for the menacing or harassing release of personal data using a carriage service (also known as doxxing).