With the recent phone hacking scandals in the UK, politicians in Australia are asking ‘can it happen here?’ – and it is highlighting the lack of rights individuals have with respect to privacy in Australia along with the lack of powers that the Privacy Commissioner has.
Whilst there has been an increase in the number of reported data breaches, there is no legislative requirement for companies to report breaches – hence a lot of breaches are not reported. The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) have made a number of recommendations on Data Breach legislation that have (largely) not been acted on by the Federal Government.
For more details, please see the following article: