 | EnergyAustralia's Privacy Statement and Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy Statement
EnergyAustralia is one of Australia's largest energy services corporations.
EnergyAustralia is committed to compliance with the new privacy laws. These laws protect the privacy of personal information EnergyAustralia holds on customers and other individuals with whom we deal.
EnergyAustralia respects the privacy of our customers, the privacy of our business contacts and the privacy of our employees.
If you would like more information about how EnergyAustralia handles personal information, you can obtain a copy of EnergyAustralia's privacy policy (set out below) from any EnergyAustralia office, or speak to our Privacy Officer by contacting EnergyAustralia on 13 1535.
Privacy Policy
As a state owned corporation, EnergyAustralia became bound by the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) on 1 June 2002. The NPPs are contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (the Privacy Act) and govern how organisations handle personal information.
Our Privacy Policy is divided into the following sections:
1. What Personal Information Does EnergyAustralia collect?
2. How is Personal Information used?
3. Will Personal Information be Given to Anyone Else?
4. Access and Correction
5. Is Personal information Held safely?
6. Non-Customer Personal Information
7. Contacting EnergyAustralia
8. Changes to this Privacy Policy
This privacy policy has been prepared primarily for our customers, who may have questions about how we handle personal information. However, EnergyAustralia also may handle information about people who are not customers. Non-customer personal information is discussed in Section 6.
1. What Personal Information does EnergyAustralia collect?
EnergyAustralia is one of Australia's largest energy services corporations. We perform all functions related to the distribution and supply of cost-competitive energy and energy-related services. For the purposes of our Privacy Policy, these are referred to as "our products or services".
If you ask EnergyAustralia to supply you with our products or services, EnergyAustralia will ask you to provide certain details, including your name and contact information (including your address and telephone numbers). In the case of businesses acquiring our products or services, EnergyAustralia usually requires the name, title and contact details of a contact person in the business.
EnergyAustralia requires this personal information in order to provide you with our products or services, and in order to manage our relationship with you. EnergyAustralia may also request information about you in order to help you decide which of our products or services would best suit your requirements. However, we don't collect information we don't need.
Generally, EnergyAustralia will not collect sensitive information about you (such as details of your race, political beliefs, religion or health), although some health information may be required if you are entitled to health-related rebates in relation to particular products and services, for example.
2. How is Personal Information used?
The personal information collected from you by EnergyAustralia is used to:
provide you with our products or services, or with other information you have requested. This will include use of personal information for establishing and maintaining any necessary accounts or records or billing systems; and notify you about new EnergyAustralia products or services or promotions from time to time.
If at any time you no longer wish to be notified about new EnergyAustralia products or services or promotions, please let us know.
3. Will Personal Information be Given to Anyone Else?
In the circumstances described below, personal information may be disclosed outside EnergyAustralia.
(a) Outsourcing
Personal information collected by EnergyAustralia may be disclosed to third parties to whom EnergyAustralia contracts out specialised functions (including mailing houses and printing companies). If EnergyAustralia does disclose personal information to third party contractors under outsourcing or contracting arrangements, EnergyAustralia takes steps to ensure that those contractors:
- comply with the National Privacy Principles when they handle your personal information; and
- are authorised only to use personal information in order to provide the services or to perform the functions required by EnergyAustralia.
(b) Disclosures required by law
For legal reasons, other disclosures may need to be made to law enforcement agencies, government agencies, courts or external advisors. For example, EnergyAustralia may be asked to disclose certain personal information about an individual to assist the police with an investigation into criminal activities. EnergyAustralia's policy is to only make such disclosures in accordance with the Privacy Act.
EnergyAustralia does not sell, rent or trade personal information to or with third parties.
4. Access and Correction
Under the Privacy Act, you have a right to seek access to information which EnergyAustralia holds about you (although there are some exceptions to this). You also have the right to ask us to correct information about you which is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.
If you wish to exercise your right under the Privacy Act to seek access to the personal information that EnergyAustralia holds about you, we ask that you contact EnergyAustralia's Privacy Officer (contact details are set out in Section 7) who will explain how EnergyAustralia will handle your access request.
To summarise, in the first instance, we will generally provide you with a summary of the information we hold about you. We will assume (unless you tell us otherwise) that your request relates to our current records about you. These current records will include personal information about you which is included in our databases and in paper files, and which may be used by EnergyAustralia on a day to day basis.
To provide you with access to this personal information, EnergyAustralia would ordinarily provide you with a print-out of the relevant personal information from our databases, or with photocopies of records which are held only on paper files. If personal information about you (for example, your name & address details) is duplicated across different databases, we will generally provide you with one print-out of this information, rather than multiple print-outs. Ordinarily, EnergyAustralia will not charge you for the cost of providing this type of access to these records.
For legal and administrative reasons, EnergyAustralia may also store records containing personal information in its archives. You may seek access to the records held by EnergyAustralia which are not current records, but if you do so, we may charge you for the cost of providing access.
If you are of the view that personal information about you is not accurate, complete or up to date, please provide EnergyAustralia's Privacy Officer with your request for correction (contact details are set out in Section 7). EnergyAustralia's policy is to consider any requests for correction in a timely way.
5. Is personal information stored safely?
EnergyAustralia takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of personal information held by it from such risks as loss or unauthorised access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure. Our IT systems are password protected and if personal information is held on paper files, access is restricted to EnergyAustralia staff with the appropriate security clearances. EnergyAustralia only permits your details to be accessed by authorised personnel.
6. Non-customer information
Sometimes, EnergyAustralia needs to collect personal information about individuals who are not customers. This will usually arise where we collect the name and business contact details of a person who is the contact in a government agency or company with whom we deal. EnergyAustralia's policy is to only use personal information collected from non-customers for the business purpose for which it was collected.
7. Contacting EnergyAustralia
If you have any questions or comments about this privacy policy, or if you wish to complain about how we have handled personal information about you, please contact EnergyAustralia's Privacy Officer:
by telephone 13 15 35 or
by facsimile (02) 9269 4024 or
by e-mail privacy@energy.com.au or
by letter The Privacy Officer, EnergyAustralia, GPO Box 4009, Sydney.
8. Changes to this Privacy Policy.
This privacy policy may change from time to time. This policy was last updated on 1 July 2002.
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