UTS Human Technology Institute welcomes today's commitment by the Albanese Government to reform Australia's privacy laws.
Australian privacy law is dangerously out of date, and fails to protect Australians amid the rise of new technologies.
The Attorney-General’s proposed changes to privacy law will bring our privacy protections into the modern digital age.
The government’s strong commitment to strengthening privacy protections is a huge step in the right direction towards ensuring Australians have adequate protection from harmful data breaches and invasive data collection by businesses
Dr Kate Bower, HTI Fellow
Many of the reforms, promised today by the Albanese Government, are urgent and important. HTI is committed to working with the Government to enable these important reforms.
Each day we delay is another day that Australians are vulnerable to privacy harm from high-risk technologies, such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence (AI), said Bower.
In particular, we welcome the commitment to expand the requirement of Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) to non-government entities for activities with a high privacy risk, such as facial recognition technology, as proposed in HTI’s model law report.
HTI also commends the Government for taking steps to improve the transparency and integrity of decisions made using AI and strongly supports the need for coordination across government departments to ensure the safe and responsible use of AI and automated decision-making.