Privacy clauses

Authored by the LexisNexis Legal Writer team.

Purpose of clause

Many commercial and business relationships involve one or more of the parties collecting, using, handling or disclosing personal information about individuals (eg personal information about customers, suppliers or manufacturers). These activities may be subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) (and other Commonwealth, state or territory legislation which imposes privacy-related obligations in specific contexts). Including a privacy clause in an agreement can help the parties to manage their obligations concerning these matters.

Where one or more parties to an agreement have obligations under the Privacy Act, it can be important to ensure that the agreement expressly requires the relevant parties to comply with their respective privacy obligations. This may be particularly crucial where one party is disclosing personal information to another party as part of the services or transactions contemplated by the agreement. In this situation, if the recipient of the personal information misuses that information, then this could lead to complaints against or investigations of the information provider, potentially exposing the information provider to liabilities and penalties.

Privacy Act obligations

The Privacy Act imposes privacy obligations on “Australian Privacy Principles (APP) entities” (among others) in relation to the collection, use, correction and disclosure of “personal information”.