Privacy, Complaints and Grievances Policies

Frequently Asked Questions

What is personal information?

The Privacy Act defines personal information as ‘information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not; and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not’. ‘Personal information’ describes a broad range of information, including:

General Information such as information about your identity (name, age, date of birth, gender), your contact details (address, email, phone number etc.) and financial details (for payment of services).
Sensitive Information, defined in the Privacy Act as information or opinion about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinion, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or criminal record, provided the information or opinion otherwise meets the definition of personal opinion.

Why do we collect, use, or hold your personal information?

Personal information will be collected from an individual in the course of CoMHWA activities, including where a person becomes a member or accesses CoMHWA services including specific programs or projects. Information is only collected if the personal information is reasonable and necessary for CoMHWA’s functions/activities.

What kinds of information do we collect and hold?

Personal information collected by CoMHWA on the membership form includes the name, address, postal address, email address and phone number of the applicant and the type of membership being applied for i.e. individual or group/associate.
Sensitive information is only collected with individual consent and if the information is reasonable and necessary for CoMHWA’s functions/activities.
Our Peer Pathways service records phone calls, but the caller will be notified that this is happening.

What is unsolicited personal information?

Unsolicited personal information is personal information that we have not asked for. If we receive any unsolicited information that is not reasonably necessary, or directly related to one or more of our business activities, then we will de-identify or destroy it.

What about security measures?

We will protect your personal information as far as practicable from misuse, interference, loss, and from unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. We do this by using security measures in our information, communication and technology systems.
All member/consumer files are kept secure when not being accessed directly by authorised staff.
Confidential member/consumer files and information is available only to authorised CoMHWA staff for the purpose of assisting the member/consumer in activities relevant to their business with CoMHWA.
Electronic personal information will be backed up constantly to the online cloud server.

How can I access and correct my personal information?

We aim to ensure that the personal information we hold is accurate, up to date, complete, relevant, and not misleading. Under APPs 12 and 13 you have the right to ask for access to personal information that we hold about you, and to ask that we correct that personal information.

If you would like to seek access to, or revise your personal information, or feel that the information we hold may be incorrect or incomplete, please contact admin@comhwa.org.au. CoMHWA will respond to requests for correction of personal information within a reasonable time period.

All requests for information will be processed in line with CoMHWA values.

CoMHWA may not be required to give access to an individual to personal information that CoMHWA believes could pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of the individual, or to public health/safety, if giving access would have unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals, or the request is frivolous or vexatious, giving access would have legal/enforcement implications, or the information is commercially sensitive. If CoMHWA refuses access to personal information, we will inform the person making the request of our reason for refusing it.

If we are unable to correct your information on the original record due to legal or contractual obligations, we may be able to add a statement instead. If we are unable to correct your personal information, we will tell you of the reasons why.

Complaints and Feedback

If you believe that we have breached your privacy in our handling of your personal information, you may lodge a complaint with us. Our complaints, feedback and compliments forms are available on our website.

If you are unhappy with the resolution of your complaint, or the way we have handled your complaint, you may refer your complaint in writing to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner by email to enquiries@oaic.gov.au or see their website.

You are welcome to leave us feedback or make a complaint via this link. Complaints will be responded to in the first instance, within 5 business days.

Website-Specific Privacy Policy

Comments

The CoMHWA website address is: https://comhwa.org.au, this is hosted by WordPress.

When visitors leave comments on our site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where your data is sent

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.