Date issued: 12 August 2008

CPA Australia today said there was no reason to remove the small business exemption from the Privacy Act, as recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission.

'We do not support a proposal which will increase the compliance burden on small business through the removal of the exemption,' CPA Australia business policy adviser Gavan Ord said.

'At this point, there is no justification for the Government to establish unified privacy principles that will affect small businesses, even though it has said that it will not be considering the ALRC’s recommendation for the next 18 months at least.

'We believe the current small business exemption (together with the exclusions to the exemption) strikes a good balance between protecting the privacy of consumer information and avoiding unnecessary burdens on small businesses.'

The current small business exemption does not apply to businesses that:

• engage in activities that pose a high risk to privacy, such as private sector health services providers and small businesses that trade in personal information
• are reporting entities under the Anti Money Laundering laws (e.g financial planners and brokers)
• are prescribed in regulations as an organisation to which the Privacy Act obligations apply to (e.g residential tenancy database operators)
• or voluntarily opt in to be covered by the Act

'Many small businesses do not have significant holdings of personal information, and those that may have customer records do not sell or otherwise deal with customer information in a way that poses a high risk to their customers' privacy,' Mr Ord said.

'We encourage the Government to continue to deal with high risk industries through regulation and law changes rather than imposing the compliance requirements on all small business.'

CPA Australia is one of the world's largest accounting bodies, representing 117,000 finance, accounting and business professionals in Australia, Asia and Europe.

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