I can match the anecdotes about being refused simple information "because it will breach privacy laws". For example, I was recently refused access to information about my grandmother who, if she were alive, would be 110. This was a government agency.

Genealogists discovered a month or so back that Victoria quietly raised the bar on access to birth certificates from the existing rule of a 75 years embargo to 100 years. A senior officer said it was to ‘protect privacy’ but, when pressed, could not say how privacy was breached under the old rule.

Yet when I wanted to protect my privacy in the face of a video store owner’s demand to see a gas/electricity/rates bill (I’d already shown him my driver’s licence with photo ID) he said privacy laws didn’t apply to him – and he didn’t want someone as uncooperative as me as a customer.

I endorse the proposal that the current system of two sets of privacy principles - one for the public sector, one for the private sector - to be replaced with a unified set of privacy principles to apply to the Commonwealth, States and Territories in both the private and public sectors. Unified principles are not enough - we also need unified laws. And exemptions to MPs and journalists should be removed – they are among the worst offenders.

The current “light-touch” approach of the Privacy Act is not working. Organisations know they can get away with a slap on the wrist even for the most serious breaches of the law. The “light-touch approach is as ineffectual as self-regulation in media and advertising.

As a former employee of one of these abusers of those laws (Brisbane City Council)i will now be asking anybody that wants me to prove who i am to also show me a photo id and proof of who they are.It is a fair question as i cannot be sure if they are just a scammer ,terrorist ,or a plain petty thief. I suggest if everyone who is asked to prove who they are with our own detailed information to expect they same respect be shown by the person asking for it to show the same respect. Because if it is for privacy reasons and security i for one will want to know who has just recorded my personal details.

In my time at the NAB "Customer Satisfaction Research Centre" where we would bug NAB customers in the middle of dinner to find out what they thought of the bank, the Privacy Act caused me no end of grief. The worst moment came when I was given the number of a "Mr Smith" to call, and his wife answered. Under privacy regulations, I was not allowed to speak to his wife about his banking details. (It would have been the same if it had been the other way round.) I was subsequently accused of sexism. If I ever meet the people involved in the drafting of the privacy act, I will give them bloody noses.

Changing the subject, I wish they could make the paparazzi adhere to the privacy act. There are a lot of celebrities out there who would have to wish that people would just leave them alone.

<The current “light-touch” approach of the Privacy Act is not working. Organisations know they can get away with a slap on the wrist even for the most serious breaches of the law.>
You are quite right, Frank Gol. And knowing this they still breach privacy laws without a single thought to the possible consequences. Recently the Westpac Bank gave all my new details, including my name change, to my violent ex-spouse simply because he asked while he was using his 'charming' face. We had been divorced several years but he used the information again to bully, threaten, etc. I took this to the Ombudsman, who themselves were rude, dismissive, uncaring, and obviously working for Westpac. After engaging the services of a solicitor to deal with them, after two years they finally concluded that Westpac had indeed given the ex-spouse all my current details and offered a small cash settlement by way of apology. But no undertaking that they would compell Westpac or other banks to follow their own privacy laws or that this would not happen again. I wonder how many other women and children's lives placed in jeopardy by their dismissive approach of current laws. Yet I now cannot get the birth certificates of the children to whom I gave birth! How ridiculous is this society becoming?

I can add to this. Recently the privacy act has prevented me from getting information, through my solicitor, to enable me to sue for damages done to my vehicle during a road accident. I am not allowed to know the persons REAL ADDRESS AND LICENCE NUMBER, because of course he gave me the wrong information at the scene, which then led to me trying to sue the company, in which the vehicle belonged too, again not able to get basic information from a regsitration number. So needless to say I have exhausted my options for reimbursement of my $5000 that this company owes me for an accident that was NOT MY FAULT. But because I cannot get basic informaiton from ANYWHERE, even through my solicitor, through a court order or through registration databases I cannot get what is rightly mine. This Privacy Law protects the guilty and excuse the language just sux!