The Australian Federal Parliament commenced sitting on August 30, 2016, and the long-proposed mandatory data breach notification legislation is again on the newly-elected Coalition Government’s agenda. Currently, the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) does not require an organisation or agency to notify an individual of a data breach involving their personal information, but this looks likely to change soon.

As mentioned in our previous legal update, the Australian Attorney-General’s Department released and sought comments on an exposure draft of a mandatory data breach notification bill, the Privacy Amendment (Notification of Serious Data Breaches) Bill 2015 (Cth) (Exposure Bill). The time for submissions has now closed, and the Attorney-General’s Department has published a number of the non-confidential submissions in relation to the Exposure Bill on its website.

A number of jurisdictions around the world follow the lead from Europe in relation to data protection and impose similar restrictions on the export of personal data unless there is an “adequate level” of protection offered in the recipient jurisdiction. The EU Commission’s “US Safe Harbor” decision had permitted the transfer of personal data between Europe and the US by establishing that an adequate level of data protection was ensured by the EU-US Safe Harbor scheme.