This Privacy Statement describes how PIAC handles personal information.
This Privacy Statement applies to the Public Interest Advocacy Centre Ltd (PIAC), and references to ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refer to PIAC.
PIAC is an independent, non-profit organisation that works with people and communities who are marginalised and facing disadvantage. The work that PIAC does includes a combination of:
- legal advice and representation, specialising in test cases and strategic casework;
- research, analysis and policy development; and
- advocacy for systems change and public interest outcomes.
The types of personal information PIAC collects and holds
PIAC may collect and hold information about you.
PIAC collects and holds personal information about people who:
- Are legal clients or seek legal assistance. The kind of information we generally collect from our clients includes your name, contact details, identification information (eg date of birth) and records of your contact with PIAC. We may collect information about your circumstances (eg your employment), and information about the matter you are seeking assistance with. We will hold copies of any documents about your or your legal matter that we collect.
- Are third parties involved in legal matters with PIAC’s clients or potential clients. We may collect identification information and information about your circumstances.
- Donate money to PIAC. We may collect your contact and payment details, amount and frequency of donations and communication preferences.
- Subscribe to PIAC communications. We may collect details about the information you access in our communications.
- Attend PIAC events. We may collect information about your attendance at PIAC events.
- Make a complaint. We may collect details of your complaint, information collected in any investigation of the matter and details of the resolution of the complaint.
- Apply for or accept a job or other position at PIAC. We may collect the information you include in your application and resume, including details of your skills, experience and education. We may also collect referee reports, work eligibility details and background checks. If you go on to work for PIAC, we may also collect emergency contacts, payment details, tax details (including tax file numbers), leave details (including medical certificates) and superannuation details.
- Visit the PIAC Website at piac.asn.au (PIAC Website). We may collect information about use of the PIAC Website, including IP address, pages/screens viewed, date and time, information input, referring domain, links and content accessed, device type, operating system, browser used and general location.
Why does PIAC collect personal information?
PIAC collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information to manage our services, operations and relationships, employ and manage staff and better understand and interact with the people we deal with. These purposes may include:
- to enable you to access and use the PIAC Website, and associated applications and social media profiles;
- to contact and communicate with you, for example, in relation to an enquiry;
- to verify the identity of individuals and the information we collect, and update the information where appropriate;
- internal records management and administrative purposes;
- analytics, market research and business development, including to operate and improve the PIAC Website, associated applications and associated social media profiles;
- to manage and facilitate any transfer of operations of our organisation to another, or vice versa;
- to manage safety and security in relation to our people, sites, systems and assets;
- to manage claims, complaints and investigations;
- to comply with our legal obligations and resolve any disputes that we may have; and
- to consider your employment application.
You do not generally have to provide personal information to us. However, if you do not, we may be unable to provide legal assistance, advice or other services to you, or it may limit the services we can provide.
We are required or authorised by law to collect some personal information, for example under the Legal Profession Uniform Law, Fair Work Act, Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act, Income Tax Assessment Acts and other tax laws, Corporations Act, occupational health and safety laws, and workers compensation laws. We also collect this information to comply with the Mandatory Standards for Community Legal Centres that are members of Community Legal Centres Australia and as required to receive government funding for legal assistance services.
How PIAC collects personal information
PIAC will generally collect personal information directly from the person. In some circumstances PIAC may collect personal information from another source.
Where personal information is not collected directly from you, PIAC may, where lawful, collect that personal information from:
- publicly available sources (online and offline);
- third parties, such as government agencies, including those referred to in the ‘Disclosure of personal information’ section below;
- your organisation; and
- your authorised representatives.
PIAC may also create new personal information through conducting and producing analysis, commentary, reports and reviews.
Disclosure of personal information
The nature of the services provided by PIAC means that it is often necessary for us to disclose your personal information to other parties. We have set out below some of the key types of parties to whom we disclose personal information. We may also inform you of others where applicable.
Common third parties we might need to disclose your personal information to include:
- the legal providers that give legal assistance to our clients;
- other community legal service providers (eg for file audit purposes);
- our funding providers (although personal information will only be provided with consent);
- financial institutions (eg for payment processing);
- referees whose details are provided to us by job applicants;
- government authorities, including regulatory and enforcement agencies; and
- courts.
We may also need to disclose your personal information to contracted service providers including:
- information technology service providers;
- event and function organisers;
- communications, analytics, investigation and research service providers;
- freight and courier services; and
- external business advisers (such as recruitment advisors, auditors and lawyers).
Some of the third parties to whom we disclose your personal information are in overseas locations including USA, Vietnam and Philippines.
Security
PIAC takes a number of security measures to protect personal information from loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure. Depending on the circumstances, some of these measures can include data access controls, firewalls, restricted access to our sites and requirements for our service providers to protect personal information they handle on our behalf.
Accessing and correcting personal information
Please contact us (details below) if you would like to request access to or correction of any personal information we hold about you. Please provide as much detail as you can about the information required, to help us retrieve it. We may need to verify your identity.
PIAC may decline a request for access or correction where authorised by law, in which case PIAC will generally provide written reasons for doing so.
Complaints
If you believe that we have breached the Australian Privacy Principles and wish to make a complaint, please contact us using the details below and provide us with full details of the alleged breach. We will investigate your complaint within a reasonable period of time, depending on the difficulty of your complaint and respond to you, in writing, setting out the outcome of our investigation and the steps we will take to deal with your complaint. We may need to engage or consult with other parties in order to investigate and deal with any complaints. We will keep records of your complaint and any resolution.
The PIAC Website
In order to help us understand and improve your experience on the PIAC Website we may use cookies. Cookies are small pieces of information that websites transfer onto user devices for record-keeping and enhanced functionality. Most browsers allow you to choose whether to accept cookies or not. You can use your browser settings to delete cookies and reject cookies, however note that some functionality on the PIAC Website may be limited if you do so.
The PIAC Website may use Google services such as Google Analytics from time to time. For more about how Google collects and processes data, please see Google’s privacy policy and their information at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.
The PIAC Website may contain links to other websites. We do not have any control over those websites and we are not responsible for the protection and privacy of any personal information which you provide whilst visiting those websites. Those websites are not governed by this Privacy Statement.
Amendments
We may, at any time and at our discretion, vary this Privacy Statement by publishing the amended Privacy Statement on the PIAC Website. We recommend you check the PIAC Website regularly to ensure you are aware of our current Privacy Statement.
Contact us
If you have a query about how PIAC handles privacy matters, please contact PIAC on the details below and ask to speak to the one of PIAC’s Principal Solicitors.
Email: [email protected]
Address: Level 5, 175 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: +61 2 8898 6500
Last updated: 4 September 2023