Privacy Policy

1. EnergyAustralia's approach to privacy

EnergyAustralia respects privacy and is committed to complying with the National Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988. This website privacy policy explains how we handle information we collect online. For more information about how EnergyAustralia handles personal information collected offline, and information about how you can seek access to the personal information which EnergyAustralia holds about you, click here for EnergyAustralia's Privacy Statement and Privacy Policy

2. What personal information is collected online

This website privacy policy applies to the information we collect from you when you use the EnergyAustralia Website. We may collect personal information from you online when you complete a form on this Website (for example if you register for gas or GreenFuture, or if you send an email to our Home Economist, or if you ask for an energy quote). We may ask you to provide your name, address, e-mail address and contact telephone number. Sometimes these will be your business contact details, and other times these details will identify how we can contact you at home.

As noted below at point five, we may also collect other information as a result of your use of the EnergyAustralia website, which may or may not identify you.

3. How do we use personal information collected online?

If we collect personal information from you online, we may use it to:

  • provide you with our products or services, or with other information you have requested.; and
  • communicate with you effectively. If you agree, we may use your contact details to notify you about new EnergyAustralia products or services or promotions from time to time.

From time to time we may also undertake online customer surveys to collect statistics about our customers for research and product development purposes. These surveys help us to develop new products and services to meet your needs. Again, whether or not you participate in these surveys is your choice.

4. Other important privacy issues

In order to protect your privacy:

  • We do not sell or give to other persons or organisations lists containing your personal information.
  • We will not disclose any personal information we hold about you to any third person without your written consent or your implied consent. You give implied consent when you indicate to us that you wish to obtain information about goods or services supplied by third parties.
  • We protect your privacy by restricting access to personal information about you to those EnergyAustralia staff who need it, either to process your query, or to provide you with the services you have asked for, or to provide you with information about EnergyAustralia's products and services (as described above).

5. Tracking use

When you visit the EnergyAustralia website, we may collect additional information about your use of the Website, which may or may not identify you. We may collect information about which pages you visit on the Website to help us determine which parts of the site you value, so that we can build and develop our Website to best meet your needs. We may also collect information about your Internet browser, operating system, address of the referring site, your internet protocol address and clickstream information. This information helps us to understand how you came to find our Website.

6. Contacting EnergyAustralia

If you have any questions or comments about this Website Privacy Policy, or about our handling of personal information about you, please contact EnergyAustralia's Privacy Officer by:

  • telephone 13 15 35
  • facsimile (02) 9269 4024 or
  • e-mail privacy@energy.com.au or
  • you can write to The Privacy Officer, EnergyAustralia, GPO Box 4009, Sydney NSW.

Privacy policy statement

EnergyAustralia is one of Australia's largest energy services corporations.

EnergyAustralia is committed to compliance with the new privacy laws. These laws protect the privacy of personal information EnergyAustralia holds on customers and other individuals with whom we deal.

EnergyAustralia respects the privacy of our customers, the privacy of our business contacts and the privacy of our employees.

If you would like more information about how EnergyAustralia handles personal information, you can obtain a copy of EnergyAustralia's privacy policy (set out below) from any EnergyAustralia office, or speak to our Privacy Officer by contacting EnergyAustralia on 13 15 35.

Privacy policy

As a state owned corporation, EnergyAustralia became bound by the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) on 1 June 2002. The NPPs are contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (the Privacy Act) and govern how organisations handle personal information.

Our privacy policy is divided into the following sections:

  1. What personal information does EnergyAustralia collect?
  2. How is personal information used?
  3. Will personal information be given to anyone else?
  4. Access and correction
  5. Is personal information held safely?
  6. Non-customer personal information
  7. Contacting EnergyAustralia
  8. Changes to this privacy policy

This privacy policy has been prepared primarily for our customers, who may have questions about how we handle personal information. However, EnergyAustralia also may handle information about people who are not customers. Non-customer personal information is discussed in Section 6.

a. What personal information does EnergyAustralia collect?

EnergyAustralia is one of Australia's largest energy services corporations. We perform all functions related to the distribution and supply of cost-competitive energy and energy-related services. For the purposes of our Privacy Policy, these are referred to as "our products or services".

If you ask EnergyAustralia to supply you with our products or services, EnergyAustralia will ask you to provide certain details, including your name and contact information (including your address and telephone numbers). In the case of businesses acquiring our products or services, EnergyAustralia usually requires the name, title and contact details of a contact person in the business.

EnergyAustralia requires this personal information in order to provide you with our products or services, and in order to manage our relationship with you. EnergyAustralia may also request information about you in order to help you decide which of our products or services would best suit your requirements. However, we don't collect information we don't need.

Generally, EnergyAustralia will not collect sensitive information about you (such as details of your race, political beliefs, religion or health), although some health information may be required if you are entitled to health-related rebates in relation to particular products and services, for example.

b. How is personal information used?

The personal information collected from you by EnergyAustralia is used to:

  • provide you with our products or services, or with other information you have requested. This will include use of personal information for establishing and maintaining any necessary accounts or records or billing systems; and
  • notify you about new EnergyAustralia products or services or promotions from time to time.

If at any time you no longer wish to be notified about new EnergyAustralia products or services or promotions, please let us know.

c. Will personal information be given to anyone else?

In the circumstances described below, personal information may be disclosed outside EnergyAustralia.

(a) Outsourcing

Personal information collected by EnergyAustralia may be disclosed to third parties to whom EnergyAustralia contracts out specialised functions (including mailing houses and printing companies). If EnergyAustralia does disclose personal information to third party contractors under outsourcing or contracting arrangements, EnergyAustralia takes steps to ensure that those contractors:

  • comply with the National Privacy Principles when they handle your personal information; and
  • are authorised only to use personal information in order to provide the services or to perform the functions required by EnergyAustralia.

(b) Disclosures required by law

For legal reasons, other disclosures may need to be made to law enforcement agencies, government agencies, courts or external advisers. For example, EnergyAustralia may be asked to disclose certain personal information about an individual to assist the police with an investigation into criminal activities. EnergyAustralia's policy is to only make such disclosures in accordance with the Privacy Act. EnergyAustralia does not sell, rent or trade personal information to or with third parties.

d. Access and correction

Under the Privacy Act, you have a right to seek access to information which EnergyAustralia holds about you (although there are some exceptions to this). You also have the right to ask us to correct information about you which is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.

If you wish to exercise your right under the Privacy Act to seek access to the personal information that EnergyAustralia holds about you, we ask that you contact EnergyAustralia's Privacy Officer (contact details are set out in Section 7) who will explain how EnergyAustralia will handle your access request.

To summarise, in the first instance, we will generally provide you with a summary of the information we hold about you. We will assume (unless you tell us otherwise) that your request relates to our current records about you. These current records will include personal information about you which is included in our databases and in paper files, and which may be used by EnergyAustralia on a day to day basis.

To provide you with access to this personal information, EnergyAustralia would ordinarily provide you with a print-out of the relevant personal information from our databases, or with photocopies of records which are held only on paper files. If personal information about you (for example, your name & address details) is duplicated across different databases, we will generally provide you with one print-out of this information, rather than multiple print-outs. Ordinarily, EnergyAustralia will not charge you for the cost of providing this type of access to these records.

For legal and administrative reasons, EnergyAustralia may also store records containing personal information in its archives. You may seek access to the records held by EnergyAustralia which are not current records, but if you do so, we may charge you for the cost of providing access.

If you are of the view that personal information about you is not accurate, complete or up to date, please provide EnergyAustralia's Privacy Officer with your request for correction (contact details are set out in Section 7). EnergyAustralia's policy is to consider any requests for correction in a timely way.

e. Is personal information stored safely?

EnergyAustralia takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of personal information held by it from such risks as loss or unauthorised access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure. Our IT systems are password protected and if personal information is held on paper files, access is restricted to EnergyAustralia staff with the appropriate security clearances. EnergyAustralia only permits your details to be accessed by authorised personnel.

f. Non-customer information

Sometimes, EnergyAustralia needs to collect personal information about individuals who are not customers. This will usually arise where we collect the name and business contact details of a person who is the contact in a government agency or company with whom we deal. EnergyAustralia's policy is to only use personal information collected from non-customers for the business purpose for which it was collected.

g. Contacting EnergyAustralia

If you have any questions or comments about this privacy policy, or if you wish to complain about how we have handled personal information about you, please contact EnergyAustralia's Privacy Officer by:

  • telephone 13 15 35
  • facsimile (02) 9269 4024 or
  • e-mail privacy@energy.com.au or
  • you can write to The Privacy Officer, EnergyAustralia, GPO Box 4009, Sydney NSW.

h. Changes to this privacy policy.

This privacy policy may change from time to time. This policy was last updated in October 2003.