VIC The Privacy Act 1988

[Mike Love]

Hi guys,
I have a tricky question - To register a Federal political party, you need to provide the AEC a list of 550 members. The AEC check those names against the electoral role, and ensure they are all not members of other parties etc.
The AEC refused our application because they stated that only 491 members were actually "eligible members". So we asked for that list, and they refused to provide it to us stating the following:

Unfortunately the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) cannot provide a list of the members who were identified by AEC systems on the Party’s list as being on the Commonwealth Electoral Roll (or not auto-matched to the Commonwealth Electoral Roll) for privacy reasons.

The Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act) prohibits the AEC from disclosing the submitted persons’ personal information to the Party if the AEC has not obtained ongoing implied or express consent from those persons that would enable the AEC to disclose the personal information.

This personal information was not collected by the AEC for the purpose of disclosing it to the Party, nor were these persons informed that it might be so disclosed. Accordingly, the AEC cannot infer that there is implied consent to do so. As express consent has also not been obtained, and there are no applicable exceptions in the Privacy Act, then the AEC is prohibited by the Privacy Act from providing this information to the Party.

Each member signed an electronic form stating that they consent to us using their info.
Do we have any legal reason to challenge this?

 

[Rob Legat - SBPL]

The members signed an electronic form stating they consent to you using their information - I'm guessing that same form doesn't state that they consent to the AEC using their information in the form of anything other than verifying their standing to be a member. In basic terms, the Privacy Act covers four situations where information can be used/communicated:
1. For the specific purpose for which it was given.
2. For a purpose which is collateral to 1.
3. With the consent of the person to whom it pertains.
4. Under lawful obligation/compulsion (such as a court order).

I would suggest the AEC specifically does not cover (not want) consent to release information back to the applying aspirant party - to avoid a situation where any of the proposed members could be 'harassed' by the party should they not prove to be adequate candidates. Whether they would or would not is immaterial.

 

[Mike Love]

Thanks for the reply Rob.
It make perfect sense what you said - however, it puts us in an awkward position.
If 59 of our members are ineligible to be in a party - but we cannot find out exactly who they are, then when we re-submit the list, the same ineligible people will be there. If we could remove them, we could replace them with eligible members.
But we can't!
And the AEC only allow you to submit a list of 550 people, and 500 must be eligible. So I can't just give them a list of 1,000 members.

In short, it's easy for a major party to sabotage a smaller party...

 

[Rod]

Hence the need for better vetting.

 

[Mike Love]

Yep - in an ideal world.
But there is no way to know if someone is a member of another party!
If you know a way, please share your wisdom, because I don't.

 

[Rod]

Change your application form to say the person explicitly consents to AEC providing their details and status to you.