The Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill 2012 has been passed by the Senate, with amendments.

The Bill will now been sent back to the House of Representatives to approve the changes. UPDATE: Amendments approved by House of Reps. More here.

The commencement period of the Bill has been delayed to 15 months after Royal Assent (instead of 9 months).

A number of these amendments respond to the recommendations of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee’s (the Committee) report into the Bill.

Apart from technical clarifications the changes:

• Specify that at least 14 days must elapse from the giving of a written notice before a default is recorded as part of an individual’s credit reporting information
• allow mortgage insurers, who are not credit licensees, to access repayment history information.
• insert additional matters that must be contained in a credit provider’s policy.
• insert additional notification obligations which a credit provider must satisfy at, or as soon as practicable after, the collection of information.

Background
The Bill amends the Privacy Act to:
• Create the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), a single set of privacy principles applying to both Commonwealth agencies and private sector organisations, which replace the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) for the public sector and the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) for the private sector
• Introduce more comprehensive credit reporting with improved privacy protections, at the same time updating the provisions to more effectively address the significant developments in the operation of the credit reporting system since the provisions were first enacted in 1990
• Introduce new provisions on privacy codes and the credit reporting code (called the CR code), including powers for the Commissioner to develop and register codes in the public interest that are binding on specified agencies and organisations; and
• Clarify the functions and powers of the Privacy Commissioner and improve the Commissioner’s ability to resolve complaints, recognise and encourage the use of external dispute resolution services, conduct investigations and promote compliance with privacy obligations.