2020’s vision

I hope 2020 brings a way of wiping out the two decades of case law ‘principles’, ‘rules’ and ‘misconstructions’ that the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Tribunal) applies in privacy matters because if it does persons whose privacy was interfered with by a NSW public agency stand a chance of having their matters decided fairly in accordance with the law as Parliament wrote it and not according to case law that is strongly biased in favour of public agencies.

I hope the Tribunal will hear (with an open mind) and accept as correct beneficial purpose-promoting constructions of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (PPIP Act) and the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (HRIP Act), which constructions are submissions put forward by the NSW Privacy Commissioner.

I hope the Tribunal gets over the wrong and pervasive idea that NSW public agencies have a right to handle personal and health information that exists independent of the PPIP and HRIP Acts.

I hope the Tribunal will use the extensive powers given to it by the Administrative Decisions Review Act 1997 (NSW), the Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 2013 (NSW) and the PPIP Act to review conduct instead of rationalising morally and/or legally wrong conduct.

I hope that any Tribunal member who thinks the Crown Solicitor is an amicus curiae i.e. a ‘friend of the Tribunal’ will understand that the Crown Solicitor appears before it to represent its public agency client and win.

I hope the Tribunal will come to appreciate that an interference with a person’s privacy takes away the person’s autonomy and diminishes the person’s human dignity.

I hope that the Tribunal will “supervise … critically, even jealously, the legality of any purported exercise of”^[1] a public agency’s power to handle personal and health information on the understanding that it stands as the guardian “of the citizens’ right to privacy”^[2].

[1] Ousley v R [1997] HCA 49 (20 October 1997), Kirby J.

[2] Ibid.