Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment 2024

✦ Plain-English Summary

# Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment 2024

## What it does

This bill updates Australia's privacy laws and creates new criminal offences to better protect people's personal information. It covers everything from how companies handle your data and children's privacy, to new laws against "doxxing" (publicly sharing someone's personal details to harass them).

## Why it matters

Data breaches are becoming more common and serious, and existing privacy rules haven't kept pace. This update gives the Privacy Commissioner stronger powers to investigate and penalise companies that mishandle your information, and makes it illegal to deliberately expose someone's private details online.

## Key details

- **Children's privacy gets special protection** — Companies must do more to keep kids' data safe and get proper consent before collecting it
- **Doxxing is now a crime** — Publishing someone's address, phone number or other personal details to cause harm carries serious penalties (up to 5 years jail in worst cases)
- **Stronger penalties for companies** — Organisations that seriously breach privacy rules face much bigger fines and court orders
- **Rollout is staggered** — Most rules start within days of the bill passing, but the serious invasion of privacy offences (Schedule 2) take effect later once Parliament sets a specific date, and automated decision-making rules have a 24-month implementation window

Official Description

Amends the: Privacy Act 1988 and 7 other Acts to introduce a range of measures to protect the privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information, including expanding the Information Commissioner’s powers, facilitating information sharing in emergency situations or following eligible data breaches, requiring the development of a Children’s Online Privacy Code, providing protections for overseas disclosures of personal information, introducing new civil penalties, and increasing transparency about automated decisions which use personal information; Privacy Act 1988 to introduce a statutory tort to provide redress for serious invasions of privacy; and Criminal Code Act 1995 to introduce criminal offences targeting the release of personal data using a carriage service in a manner that would be menacing or harassing (known as ‘doxxing’).

Committee Referrals

Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee; Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills

Full bill PDF →APH page →

Audit History

Introduced

12 Sept 2024

Last updated on APH

10 Apr 2026

Outcome date

10 Dec 2024

Last checked by Crossbench

today

Full text indexed

today

🗳️

No formal division recorded

This bill passed by voice vote — parliament agreed without calling a formal count. A division is only recorded when a member explicitly requests one.

Constituent votes

Voting is closed — this bill has been decided by parliament.

No votes yet.

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🔒 Voting closed — this bill has been decided by parliament