Privacy watchdog to refocus on "systemic harms and market practices"

Australia’s privacy watchdog is set to be more selective in the individual privacy complaints it investigates, shifting its focus instead to broader issues and deterrence activities.

Commissioner Carly Kind unveiled the shift in a blog post late yesterday, saying the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) would “take a robust approach to assessing the validity of individual privacy complaints, and deciding which privacy complaints warrant an investigation.”

“We believe a more proactive enforcement focus on systemic harms and market practices will make a real difference, but in order to carve out the time, resources and capability to make such a shift we need to apply more robust thresholds to our individual privacy complaint handling practices,” Kind wrote.

“We want to speed up the time it takes us to deal with privacy complaints, and ensure that the OAIC’s resources are being applied proportionately to address serious and valid privacy complaints.

“Our efforts will be increasingly directed to resolving matters in a way that will result in meaningful change.”

Kind indicated that types of privacy complaints more likely to be investigated are those with broader implications for Australian privacy laws.

“Some individual privacy complaints, while they may establish breaches of the Privacy Act, may not warrant investigation in all of the circumstances, particularly when they arise amidst other issues or proceedings, or where they don’t meet a threshold of seriousness that warrants the proportionate investment of our resources,” Kind wrote.

Kind said the current individual privacy complaint backlog at the OAIC is “significant”.

“As at February 2026, it is unlikely that we will be able to substantially progress new validly lodged individual privacy complaints for some six to 12 months after they are lodged (unless we determine there are exceptional circumstances which may warrant expeditious consideration),” she wrote.

The OAIC’s annual report shows it received 3295 privacy complaints in 2024-25, roughly the same as the prior year.