Respecting your privacy

1.	Value Added Wheat Cooperative Research Centre
1.1	The Value Added Wheat Cooperative Research Centre (VAWCRC) functions with a vision to “pursue excellent science to meet commercial needs for a more profitable wheat industry”. VAWCRC strives to deliver new and improved wheat varieties, diagnostic techniques and applied genetic and agronomic knowledge that will directly benefit its clients.
1.2	VAWCRC respects the privacy of its clients and collaborators. We understand the importance of protecting your personal information. We have policies and procedures to ensure that all personal information, no matter how or from where it is obtained, is handled sensitively, securely and in a manner fully compliant with the obligations under both our contract with the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training (the Commonwealth Agreement) and under the Privacy Act, 1988 (Cth).
2.	Privacy Obligations
2.1	VAWCRC is subject to three levels of privacy controls. It complies with:
	(1) the privacy obligations in the Commonwealth Agreement; (2) the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs); and (3) any supplementary obligations in the National Privacy Principles (NPPs) that are not inconsistent with (1).
2.2	The Commonwealth’s Privacy Act (the Act) sets out 11 IPPs that govern how Commonwealth government agencies deal with personal information. Personal information is information about an individual whose identity is apparent or can be reasonably ascertained from that information. The Commonwealth Agreement requires VAWCRC to comply with the IPPs.
2.3	Recently, the Act was amended to incorporate 10 National Privacy Principles (NPPs) that apply to most private sector organisations. The NPPs govern the way in which these private sector organisations deal with personal information and sensitive information. Sensitive information includes information about a person’s racial or ethnic origins, political opinions, religious affiliations, sexual preferences, memberships of trade associations and/or criminal record. VAWCRC complies with supplementary obligations in the NPPs that are not inconsistent with its obligations under the Commonwealth Agreement.
3.	Why we collect certain types of information
3.1	VAWCRC collect your personal details (such as your name address, telephone number and/or email address) so that we can respond to your inquiries and deliver our products and/or services to you. In order to facilitate these transactions, it may be necessary for you to provide us with your credit card number.
3.2	Your personal information is also collected to promote and market other services which we consider may be of interest to you. Please feel free to contact us if you would prefer not to receive this additional information.
3.3	You are under no obligation to provide us with any personal information. However, if you withhold the requested information we may not be able to provide you with any information, goods or services reliant on your information.
4.	Data security
4.1	Safeguarding your personal information is important to us and we have taken steps to protect it from misuse, loss and unauthorised access. This is especially important when you are performing on-line transactions. We take steps to make all such transactions secure, so that you may be confident that there is no unauthorised access to your personal information.
5.	Disclosing your personal information
5.1	We tightly control any disclosures of your personal information. We will not disclose your credit card details to any other organisation, unless required to do so by law. In general, we attempt to limit disclosures of your contact details to participants in our research or education activities.
6.	Ensuring we hold accurate information.
6.1	VAWCRC aims to ensure that the personal information we retain about you is accurate, complete and up to date. When dealing with us please provide us with complete and accurate information and let us know if your records need to be updated.
7.	Accessing your personal information
7.1	You have a right to access records containing your personal information, subject to some limited exceptions allowed by law. VAWCRC reserves the right to charge reasonable costs associated with the providing you with this access.
8.	Website Information
8.1	VAWCRC reserves the right to monitor traffic and access to our website for security and other purposes via the creation of web-logs. When you access our site we may record information such as where you have come from, which parts of our website you visited, at what time, what browser and operating system you were using and your internet protocol address.
8.2	This information is unidentified and used for statistical purposes only in order to create better performance, functionality and delivery of our online services or as otherwise authorised by law.
8.3	This site may also use session cookies to enhance your ability to move freely within any subscriber services aspect of our site. Session cookies allow you, once you have validly logged in, to move freely about without having to re-login at each new page.
8.4	When you have finished visiting our site and closed your browser, the session cookie will expire and be destroyed. No personal information will be maintained from which you might be identified.
8.5	You can decide to remove this functionality by setting your browser preferences so that it does not accept cookies but this may affect the ease with which you may use our site.
9.	Links
9.1	Our website provides links to other sites. These sites may have different privacy policies to those of VAWCRC. We are not responsible for, and advise you to check the information handling practices on, those linked sites.
10.	How to contact us
10.1	If you have any concerns or questions, or would like further information on how VAWCRC protects or uses your personal information, please do not hesitate to contact us on + 61 2 9490 8488
11.	Disclaimer
11.1	This website privacy policy is subject to amendment at any time without notice. Information received prior to an amendment will remain subject to the policy applicable before the amendment.

This site was last amended on 15 July 2003.

More information

More information about Privacy law and the National Privacy Principles is available from the Federal Privacy Commissioner at http://www.privacy.gov.au.