The Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 has been introduced into the House of Representatives.

UPDATE: the Bill passed both houses, with Senate amendments, on 28 November 2022.

UPDATE: the Bill received Royal Assent on 12 December 2022 and the increased penalties apply from 13 December 2022.

The Bill will increase the penalty under section 13G of the Privacy Act for serious or repeated interferences with privacy to $2.5 million for a person other than a body corporate, and for a body corporate the maximum penalty will increase to an amount not exceeding the greater of $50 million; three times the value of the benefit obtained; or, if the court cannot determine the value of the benefit, 30% of their adjusted turnover in the relevant period.

The Bill will also provide the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) with enhanced enforcement powers and information sharing powers including:

a. expanding the types of declarations that the Commissioner can make in a determination at the conclusion of an investigation,
b. amending the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the Privacy Act to ensure foreign organisations that carry on a business in Australia must meet the obligations under the Act, even if they do not collect or hold Australians’ information directly from a source in Australia,
c. providing the Commissioner with new powers to conduct assessments,
d. providing the Commissioner new infringement notice powers to penalise entities for failing to provide information without the need to engage in protracted litigation, and
e. strengthening the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme to ensure the Commissioner has comprehensive knowledge of the information compromised in an eligible data breach to assess the particular risk of harm to individuals.

The Act will come into effect on the day after the Act receives Royal Assent.

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