The Woodards Group (Woodards) is committed to respecting your right to privacy and protecting your personal information.
We are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles set out in the Act.
We will ensure that all officers, employees and subcontractors are aware of and understand Woodards obligations as well as their own obligations under the Act. We will achieve this through the provision of training and through maintaining and implementing internal policies and procedures to prevent personal information from being collected, used, disclosed, retained, accessed or disposed of improperly.
This Policy applies to all your dealings with us, whether in person, or via telephone, email, correspondence or our website.
The purpose of this Policy is to:
For the purpose of this Policy, the following terms will have the following meanings, as attributed to them by section 6 of the Act:
Health information means:
Personal information means 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.
Sensitive information means:
Collection of Personal Information
Whenever you deal with Woodards, whether as a current or prospective seller, buyer, lessor or lessee, we will collect personal information in order to provide services to you. We do not collect personal information unless it is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, one or more of the services we provide or functions we carry out.
The types of personal information we generally collect include but is not limited to:
We will not ordinarily ask you to provide sensitive information. However, there may be circumstances where the information provided by you reveals sensitive information. For example:
We will only collect sensitive information in circumstances where:
We will, if it is reasonable or practicable to do so, collect your personal information directly from you. This may happen when you fill out a form or when you give us personal information in person, or via telephone, email, correspondence or our website.
Sometimes we will collect personal information from a third party or a publicly available source. For example, we may need to collect personal information from a credit reporting agency, your legal adviser, your past or current employers, your previous lessors or property managers, and tenancy information services or databases.
If we receive personal information that we did not solicit, we will determine as soon as reasonably practicable whether we could have lawfully collected that information as part of our functions or activities. If we are not satisfied that we could have lawfully collected the information, then we will (if it is lawful and reasonable) destroy the information or ensure that it is de-identified.
You may choose to deal with us anonymously or under a pseudonym where lawful and practical. Where anonymity or use of a pseudonym will render us unable to provide the relevant service or do business, we may request that you identify yourself.
For example, whenever documents are to be submitted to government agencies or financial institutions, it is essential that we record your name accurately.
Use and Disclosure of Personal Information
Personal information collected by Woodards will ordinarily be used for the following purposes:
In order to achieve the purposes described above, we may disclose your personal information to the persons/organisations described below:
In the event that you are a seller or a lessee, we may disclose your personal information to prospective buyers of the property owned or leased by you.
We will only use and disclose personal information for the primary purpose for which it was initially collected, or for purposes which are directly related to one of our functions or activities.
We will not disclose your personal information to government agencies, private sector organisations or any third parties unless one of the following applies:
Personal information provided to Woodards may be shared with its related companies. We will take all reasonable and practical measures to keep such information strictly confidential.
In the course of providing services to you, it may be necessary for us to enter your personal information into forms generation software and real estate websites. Depending on the terms of use of such software and websites, a third party may acquire rights to use or disclose information entered into the relevant forms or websites.
The collection and use of personal information by third parties may be subject to separate privacy policies or the laws of other jurisdictions.
Woodards may transfer your personal information to overseas countries in order to perform one or more of our functions or activities. In these circumstances, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles in relation to the information.
Like many other businesses in Australia, Woodards may rely on third party suppliers or contractors to provide specialised services such as web hosting, cloud computing technology and data storage services. If personal information is provided to these suppliers and contractors in order to enable them to perform the agreed tasks, we will make every effort to ensure that the supplier or contractor handles the personal information in accordance with the Act and the Australian Privacy Principles. We will also require all suppliers and contractors to provide privacy undertakings and enter into confidentiality agreements.
There may be limited circumstances in which it is necessary for us to collect a government related identifier such as your tax file number or Centrelink reference number. We will not use or disclose your government related identifiers unless we are required or authorized to do so by law or by a court or tribunal order, or in order to fulfill our obligations to a State or Territory authority.
Marketing our products and services
Woodards may use or disclose your personal information to let you know about products and services in which you may be interested. You can contact us at any time if you no longer wish us to market our products and services to you (see the Contacting Us section for more information).
Accuracy of Personal Information
Woodards will take reasonable steps to ensure that all personal information it collects, uses or discloses is accurate, complete and up-to-date.
If you believe your personal information is not accurate, complete or up-to-date, please contact us (see the Contacting Us section for more information).
Security
Your personal information may be stored in hard copy documents or electronically. Woodards is committed to keeping your personal information secure and safe. Some of the ways we do this are:
We will review and update our security measures from time to time.
In addition, we will review the personal information and sensitive information held by us from time to time, ensuring that information which is no longer needed for a purpose for which it was initially collected is destroyed or de-identified.
Your Privacy on the Internet
Woodards takes care to ensure that the information you provide to us via our website is protected. For example, our website has electronic security systems in place, including the use of firewalls and data encryption.
You may be able to access external websites by clicking on links we have provided. Those other websites are not subject to our privacy standards, policies and procedures. You will need to contact or review those websites directly to ascertain their privacy standards, policies and procedures.
Access to Personal Information
You may request access to personal information that Woodards holds about you (see the Contacting Us section for more information).
We will acknowledge your request within two business days of the request being made. Access will usually be granted within five business days of our acknowledgment or, if the request involves complex considerations or voluminous photocopying or scanning, within fourteen business days. We will let you know which timeframe applies to your request and if any delays are anticipated.
You will need to verify your identity before access to your personal information is granted.
While we cannot and do not charge an “application fee” for you applying to access your personal information, we may charge a fee for actually giving you access to your personal information in your preferred format (where reasonable and possible), which will cover our costs involved in locating and collating information as well as reproduction costs.
Once your request has been processed by Woodards, you may be forwarded the information by mail or email or you may personally inspect it at the location where the information is held or another appropriate place. Whenever possible, we will endeavor to make the information available to you in the manner requested by you unless it is unreasonable for us to do so (e.g. if you have asked for the information to be emailed to you, we will endeavor to email the information to you. If the file size would be too large, we may send you the information by hard copy instead of email).
If you are aware that we hold personal information about you that is no longer accurate, complete or up-to-date, please contact us (see the Contacting Us section for more information)
If you request access to your personal information, or if you request that we correct your personal information, we will allow access or make the correction unless we consider that there is a sound reason to withhold the information, or not make the correction.
Under the Act, we may refuse to grant access to personal information if:
If we do not agree to make a correction to your personal information, you may provide a statement about the requested corrections, and we will ensure that the statement is apparent to any users of the relevant personal information.
If we do not agree to provide access to your personal information or to correct your personal information, we will provide written reasons for the refusal and the mechanisms available to complain about the refusal (see the Complaints section for more information).
Contacting us
You may contact us by mail, email, telephone or online as follows:
By Mail: PO Box 387, Camberwell Vic 3124
By Email: [email protected]
By Phone: 03 9805 1111
Complaints
If you consider that there has been a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles, you are entitled to complain to Woodards (see the Contacting Us section for more information).
We will acknowledge receipt of a complaint within 2 business days.
We will investigate the complaint and attempt to resolve it within 20 business days after the complaint was received. Where it is anticipated that this timeframe is not achievable, we will contact you to provide an estimate of how long it will take to investigate and respond to the complaint.
If you consider that we have not adequately dealt with a complaint, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on the below details:
By Mail: Officer of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) GPO Box 5218, SYDNEY NSW 2001
By Email: [email protected]
By Phone: 1300 363 992
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