Introduction and summary

Monitoring and surveillance technology continues to evolve, including through the use of artificial intelligence technology. The law surrounding the use of such technology is also evolving to address the need to preserve privacy and protect against abuse.

In Australia, there is a complex web of regulation governing workplace surveillance, with the states and territories adopting non-harmonised compliance regimes – in addition to the overlay of Federal law which is now set to significantly change.

On 16 February 2023, the Federal Attorney-General released the long anticipated Australian Privacy Act Review Report 2022 – setting out proposals for sweeping changes to the regime governing the privacy of employees in the workplace.

Proposed regulation follows:

• a number of recent high profile data breaches and cyber attacks in Australia; and
• the Federal Government in late 2022:
  • increasing the penalties associated with serious breaches of the federal privacy law¹; and
  • enhancing the enforcement, information gathering and sharing powers of Australia’s national privacy regulator².

Australian federal law imposes a significant maximum penalty for serious or repeated interferences with privacy for body corporates – increased late last year from AU$2.2 million to the greater of the following:

• AU$50 million;
• three times the value of the benefit obtained attributable to the breach; and
• if the court cannot determine the value of the benefit, 30% of the...

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