Privacy policy

1.1 Mission Australia cares about protecting your privacy and is required by law to comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Act), including the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

We take our privacy obligations seriously and this Policy outlines our privacy practices. It explains how: 

1. we collect, handle, use, disclose, store and secure your personal information and the purposes we do this for;
2. you may access and request correction of any record containing your personal information;
3. you may make a complaint about a breach of privacy; and
4. we disclose your personal information to recipients located in certain overseas countries.

2.1 The Policy applies to our officers, staff, volunteers, contractors, and suppliers who handle personal information collected by Mission Australia, and its related entities from time to time, including Mission Australia Housing (together, Mission Australia, we, us, our).

2.2 It applies to personal information for individuals that are external to us such as donors, clients and suppliers (you, your).

Personal Information is any information which identifies you or may reasonably identify you including 'sensitive information'.

We will collect the following kinds of Personal Information:

• your name, address, contact details, date of birth, age, gender and bank account details;
• any other personal information necessary or helpful to our engagement with you (e.g. providing services to you, receive services from you or facilitating donations);donations);
• if you are a client, supplier and/or donor, your payment details;
• sensitive information about you that includes your health information and fitness for work, disability, mental health, racial or ethnic origin, criminal convictions, religious affiliation, sexual preferences or practices, membership of a trade union or other professional association;
• the reason(s) why you are engaging with us - for example:
  • for donors, details relating to your donations and information relevant to the purpose of better identifying donor sources; and
  • for persons other than donors, your family and living circumstances, education qualifications, employment history, financial information including income, tenancy details, rental history and tenancy reference checks, interests, feedback preferences, user names and passwords, guardianship and service feedback and complaint details);
• government identifiers including where required for compliance with tax laws, tax file numbers;
• your image, video and sound recordings including from CCTV footage in our premises, recordings of telephone and video calls that we may have with you or be provided with; and
• survey and questionnaire responses that you provide to us.

Where possible, Personal Information will be collected directly from you at the time of your interaction with us. In some circumstances, Personal Information is:

• received from third parties where you are transferred or referred to us by a third party for the services that we provide;
• received from third parties who are our service providers (e.g. contracted social workers, payment processors);
• received from third parties who obtain your personal information from publicly available sources, or from publicly available sources directly;
• shared between more than one legal entity within Mission Australia to provide, expand or improve the services we provide to you or assist with more efficient delivery of outcomes related to our engagement; and
• received from third parties such as recruitment consultants, former employers and other persons who might be able to provide information to assist us to decide whether to make you an offer of employment or engage with you under contract.

Personal information may be collected in hard copy form or electronic form. All records are required to be held securely. We hold electronic records in databases with security safeguards. Some of those databases are government controlled while some are held by a third party provider.

We collect, hold, use and disclose Personal Information only for any of the following purposes:

• to provide our services which may include, case management, housing and housing support, property management employment services, counselling, education, volunteering, learning and development, fleet and procurement and fundraising;
• to consider any application you make to occupy housing owned or managed by us;
• to undertake activities to improve the wellbeing of clients, and sustaining tenancies including by way of surveys and assessment of risks factors
• to comply with the requirements of funding bodies as part of a funding agreement with us including by assessing whether or not you are eligible to receive any of our services (if you seek services from us);
• to comply with the requirements under our contracts with government agencies and other organisations;
• to facilitate our participation in tenders for new or existing business;
• to operate fundraising and charitable activities in support of our objectives;
• to provide customer service functions, including handling customer enquiries, complaints and feedback;
• to facilitate proper governance processes such as risk management, incident management, internal audit and external audits;
• to gather feedback from you and other individuals about the quality of services that we provide so that the services we provide can be continuously improved;
• to undertake marketing, fundraising and promotional activities, including activities to identify donor sources, organise events and conferences, and to inform you about our services, events and any offerings that we think might be of interest to you;
• to comply with applicable laws and meet the requirements of bodies which regulate the services we provide;
• to manage our insurance cover and the handling of claims by our insurers;
• to exercise our legal rights and responsibilities including by obtaining legal advice;
• to obtain any other kind of professional advice;
• to understand, including through aggregated information, trends and patterns which we use for industry benchmarking, research, improving services, informing policy and advocacy (see point 3.4 below for more information);
• to consider any application you make to work with us; and
• to fulfil other purposes which you have consented to.

We will use your Personal Information within our organisation by making it available, for any of the above purposes, to our employees, volunteers and contractors, noting that these persons will be subject to confidentiality agreements to protect your personal information.

We may conduct privacy impact assessments in considering whether to use, disclose or otherwise

We will not disclose your personal information to external recipients except:

• as required or permitted by law;
• for a purpose described in this Policy;
• as required by funding agreements or any other contract that we are a party to including where there is a transfer to another service provider; and
• with your consent.

Examples of organisations and/or third parties that your personal information may be provided to include: external service providers where you are transferring to a service provider that is not part of Mission Australia; 

• a government agency or other organisation, as required by our funding agreements (which may be for example by portal directly into the agency’s database system), any other contract or law; 
• third party service providers who:
  • assist us with the delivery of services to you, information storage, fundraising activities, data analysis and/or informing policy and advocacy; 
  • provide services to or partner with us to enable us to deliver services through our business operations including but not limited to third parties who provide IT services, or undertake quality assurance of our services. 
• any of our related companies;
• your trustee, guardian or attorney, and advisers; 
• any legal advisers that we may engage to act for us in relation to any actual or threatened legal action against us, or request for information from us by any person;
• any other professional advisers that we may engage to act for us in relation to any matter; 
• to an insurer in relation to any claim made by you or in relation to you or other matter relevant to managing our insurance cover; and
• third parties who collate and/or analyse information for the purposes of research (see section 3.5), improving services, informing policy and advocacy (e.g. Australian Bureau of Statistics).

4.1 If you do not wish to receive marketing or promotional communications from us, you should ‘unsubscribe’ online where a link is provided. In other circumstances, you should contact us on the email addresses below and we will cease the relevant marketing or promotional communication:

• For donors: supporter@missionaustralia.com.au
• For other individuals: privacy@missionaustralia.com.au

4.2 Where we are providing services to you, we need to be able to communicate with you in relation to those services. You cannot opt out of us communicating with you in relation to those services.

5.1 We use computer programs to make or assist with decisions that might affect your rights or interests. These decisions include:

• donor giving propensity modelling or training for AI models (which will usually only involve de-identified data); and
• incident detection.

5.2 We may use and disclose the kinds of Personal Information described in this Policy in the operation of these computer programs.

5.3 Mission Australia may also use and disclose the same kinds of Personal Information in our day-to-day operations, including to adapt, predict, recommend and personalise processes using artificial intelligence ['AI'] technologies.

5.4 Your Personal Information may be disclosed and used by service providers that we engage to provide us with and conduct AI, and other persons involved in our use of this kind of technology including developers or owners of the technology.

6.1 Access
You are entitled to request access to the personal information held by us about you. This is generally provided upon your request subject to completion of our verification and risk processes and to access restrictions imposed or permitted by law. Requests are made to the same point of contact to whom you provided your personal information or email privacy@missionaustralia.com.au.

6.2 Correction
Where you inform us that information held by us about you is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, we will correct it where we agree with you. Notices by you to us to amend information held about you are made to the same point of contact to whom you provided your personal information.

If, having received and considered an application from you to amend your information, we do not consider that the information should be amended, we will not amend it but we will include a note with the information that you consider that it should be amended, and advise you accordingly.

We engage third-party overseas or cloud-based data hosting facilities, and other service providers (Third Parties) as described in clause 3.4 which may result in Personal Information provided to us being disclosed to and accessed by those Third Parties who store the Personal Information at a destination outside Australia, including but not limited to the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and United States of America.

We will comply with the requirements of the Act when disclosing Personal Information overseas, for example by being satisfied that the recipient is subject to a law or binding scheme that provides protection substantially similar to the APPs or by taking reasonable steps to ensure the recipient does not breach the APPs.

If you object to the transfer of your Personal Information outside Australia, you should contact Mission Australia’s Chief Privacy Officer at:

• Email: privacy@missionaustralia.com.au
• Phone: Integrity/Privacy Line on 1800 021 673
• Post: Mission Australia Chief Privacy Officer, GPO Box 3515, Sydney NSW 2001

If you have an enquiry or a complaint concerning collection, use or management of your Personal Information, please direct your enquiry or complaint to any of the following:

1. the staff member who is your ordinary contact who may refer it to the Mission Australia Chief Privacy Officer;
2. email privacy@missionaustralia.com.au;
3. call our Integrity/Privacy Line 1800 021 673; or
4. write to Mission Australia Chief Privacy Officer, GPO Box 3515, Sydney, NSW, 2001.

Our staff will outline options regarding how your enquiry or complaint may be resolved. We will aim to respond and resolve your enquiry or complaint in a timely and appropriate manner.

We will treat your enquiry or complaint confidentially. You may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, wherever you believe that your rights to privacy have been breached by us and you are not happy with how we have responded to your complaint.

• Web: www.oaic.gov.au
• Mail: GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001
• Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au