How long does an agency have to respond if I complain to it?

Under the Privacy Act there is no set timeframe for an agency to respond to you if you make a privacy complaint. We generally encourage individuals to give the agency a reasonable chance to respond (30 days, unless the matter is urgent).

However, the Privacy Commissioner has also passed codes of practice, which slightly modify the way the Privacy Act applies to certain types of personal information or to certain industries.

Three of these codes (the Health Information Privacy Code (HIPC)(external link), the Telecommunications Information Privacy Code (TIPC)(external link) and the Credit Reporting Privacy Code(CRPC)(external link)) have put in place a specific process for health agencies, telecommunications agencies and credit reporters when responding to privacy complaints (see more here(external link)).