Privacy Annual Update 2023

In what seemed like moments before we were about to hit ‘send’ on this year’s update, the Government released its long-awaited response to the Privacy Act Review Report. You can read our detailed summary here. By way of reminder, the Government was responding to a range of sweeping privacy-related reforms proposed by the Attorney-General’s Department earlier in the year (see our earlier reporting on that here, as well as our more detailed take on some of the key reform themes here and here). We should now expect draft legislation to  implement the first set of proposals accepted by the Government in early 2024, along with further targeted consultation on other proposals that have been accepted ‘in principle’ but that may require further workshopping between Government and relevant stakeholders. Naturally we will keeping you informed every step of the way.

While much attention has naturally been focused on these pending reforms, the year has also been jam-packed with other developments worthy of note. In this edition of our annual update we look at, amongst other things:

• Changes to the Privacy Act that significantly increase the maximum penalties available for serious or repeated data breaches – an urgent response by the Government in response to a series of recent major data breaches –and expand the geographical reach of the Act.
• Recent examples in which the Privacy Act has been enforced against multinational organisations in relation to conduct outside Australia, illustrating the increasingly global nature of privacy law enforcement.
• Privacy implications of new generative AI technologies (after all, no legal update in 2023 would be complete without a mention of AI!).