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Protecting your rights to privacy and confidentiality is very important to us at the Department of Housing. This Privacy Statement summarises the principles contained in the Department’s Privacy Policy for the handling of customer information. In the absence of State privacy legislation, our policy is based on best practice guidelines of the Federal Privacy Commissioner. The Statement does not over-ride any existing legal obligations relating to the collection, disclosure or use of information, but explains how your privacy rights will be protected by the Department when doing business with us.

We collect information for the primary purposes of providing housing assistance and related services to the Western Australian public. This includes the provision of public rental housing, bond assistance loans, home loans and land development projects.

To provide these services, it is sometimes necessary to collect personal information from you. Personal information is information about a person whose identity is apparent, or could be identified from the information provided. Types of personal information collected by the Department may include: your contact details; income and bank statements; documents that provide proof of identification; tenancy history records and medical reports.

Sensitive information such as sexual preferences, political opinions, religion or ethnicity will not be collected without your consent and only where it is necessary for a service being provided to you. Wherever possible, we will collect the information directly from you and will advise you if we collect information from another source.

All personal information collected by us will be held securely with appropriate safeguards against misuse or unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. All information stored in electronic systems can only be accessed by authorised officers with assigned user identifiers and passwords.

The Department has developed policies and procedures to ensure consistent management of information held in regards to disclosure, transfer and security. If your information is transferred to other parties, the Department will ensure the recipients have appropriate policies to protect your privacy and confidentiality if they are not bound by the Federal Privacy Act.

When information is no longer required for the purposes it has been collected, it will be destroyed or permanently de-identified. This process removes all information that would enable your identification and would only be released where there would be a benefit to the community.

Personal information will only be used or disclosed for the purposes for which it is collected, except where you have consented otherwise. However, there may be times when it is necessary to use or disclose information, such as to prevent a threat to health or where it is required by law or by a Government department under an act of legislation.

Detailed information for rental housing tenants on who information is disclosed to and under what circumstances is provided in the Rental Policy Manual under Privacy, Confidentiality and Duty of Care. Any information released will be in accordance with internal policies and conform to legislative requirements.

You can request access to any information held on yourself and ask for amendments to be made if you believe any of the information to be inaccurate.

Personal information will not be used for the purpose of direct marketing.

When you look at this Web site, a record of your visit is logged and the following information stored for statistical purposes:

• your server address
  
• your top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc)
  
• the date and time of your visit to the site
  
• the pages you accessed and documents downloaded
  
• the previous site you have visited, and
  
• the type of browser you are using.

We do not collect any personally identifying information via the Web site, unless you choose to provide that information to us. Users should be aware that there are inherent risks in transmitting information across the internet and this site does not provide facilities for the secure transmission of information.

The Department of Housing will not make an attempt to identify users or their browsing activities. However, in the event of an investigation, a law enforcement agency or other government agency may exercise its legal authority to inspect our Internet Service Provider's logs. Information gathered via the Web site may also be subject to disclosure under a Freedom of Information Act request.

When you provide information, it will only be used for the purpose for which you have provided it, such as a subscription to an e-magazine or on-line application form for one of our products and services. We will only record your e-mail address if you provide it for contact purposes and it will not be added to a mailing list or used for any other purpose without your consent.

Any information that you provide to us in an email will be handled in accordance with the Department of Housing’s Privacy Policy.

Some Web sites store information in a small text file, called a "cookie," on your hard disk. Cookies contain information about you and your preferences, or may only contain a record of which pages you visited within the site. This information helps the site to customize the view for you the next time you visit.

Only the information that you provide, or the choices you make while visiting a Web site, can be stored in a cookie. For example, the site cannot determine your e-mail name unless you choose to type it. Allowing a Web site to create a cookie does not give that, or any other site, access to the rest of your computer and only the site that created the cookie can read it.

The Department of Housing's Web site uses only session cookies to determine browser type and no personal information is maintained which might identify you should you visit our Web site at a later date. Session cookies are short-lived, are used only during a browsing session, and expire when you quit your browser.

Contacts

FOI Coordinator: Kim Parker
Ph: (08) 9222-4501
email: Kim.Parker@housing.wa.gov.au

Web site Coordinator: Rick Boyd
Ph: (08) 9222 8129
email: Rick.Boyd@housing.wa.gov.au

Open a PDF copy of the Department of Housing  Privacy Policy (72kB). For more information on PDF documents, click here.