WA’s new privacy law does something no other Australian law does.
Every privacy law in Australia protects individuals. Only one, as of this month, builds in Aboriginal data governance. It is in Western Australia.
Every privacy law in Australia is built to protect individuals. WA’s new Act adds something none of the others contain: a statutory mechanism supporting Aboriginal data governance.
It sits alongside the Act’s responsible information sharing framework, itself described as an Australian-first, which governs how WA public entities share information for defined public-interest purposes. Together they signal a shift from data as something merely held about people to data as something communities have a recognised stake in governing.
For legal practitioners advising on native title or Aboriginal corporations, for Agencies holding information about Aboriginal people and communities, and for anyone designing information sharing arrangements in WA, these provisions deserve early attention. Understand how the Act’s Aboriginal data governance and information sharing provisions apply before you build the process, not after.