Privacy & FOI
Privacy Statement
The Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC) is required to comply with the Privacy Act 1988 and is committed to ensuring the privacy of it’s stakeholders and visitors to it’s website. The following statement addresses relevant privacy issues for the GWRDC. If you have further questions you can email us at gwrdc@gwrdc.com.au or call us on (08) 8273 0500.
Click-stream data
When you visit our website, the GWRDC makes a record of your visit and logs the following information for statistical purposes: user’s server address; users top level domain name (.com; .au; .gov etc) date and time of your visit to the site, pages accessed, documents downloaded, the previous site visited and the type of browser used. No attempt will be made to identify individual users or their browsing activities except, in the unlikely event of investigation, where a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect the service provider’s log.
When you provide information
The GWRDC will only record your email address if you send us a message. The message will be used only for the purpose for which you have provided it. We will not use your email address for any other purpose and will not disclose it without your consent. Some areas of the GWRDC website include downloadable forms that can be filled out electronically and returned via email or returned as hard copies via facsimile or the postal service.
In accordance with Information Privacy Principle 2 of the Privacy Act 1988, this personal information is used only in relation to the administering of the grant and will not be disclosed to any other agency or body without your express authorisation.
The information in these documents is used for administrative purposes so that we can process the research application and/or contact you with any queries regarding the application or research project. Information about the agencies that have received grants may be published in order to fulfil our statutory obligations in regard to accounting transparency. The names of principle investigators at that agency may be published in relation to such information. We do not however release or publish individuals work addresses, phone numbers or emails without their express permission.
Electronic data transmission
The GWRDC would like to remind visitors to it’s website that electronic data transmission has inherent security risks and we cannot guarantee that your emails will not be intercepted en route. If you have concerns in this area we will accept posted versions of any of our research submission documents together with an electronic copy on disc. See the contact us section for details of our address and facsimile number.
Your rights
The Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) gives any person the right to:
- access copies of documents (except exempt documents) we hold
- ask for information we hold about you to be changed or annotated if it is incomplete, out of date, incorrect or misleading, and
- seek a review of our decision not to allow you access to a document or not to amend your personal record.
You can ask to see any document that we hold. We can refuse access to some documents, or parts of documents that are exempt. Exempt documents may include those relating to national security, documents containing material obtained in confidence and Cabinet documents, or other matters set out in the FOI Act.
Documents available outside the FOI Act
You can get certain information, including personal information we hold about you, without following a formal process under the FOI Act.
We also publish information on our website under the Information Publication Scheme, such as our Annual Report, Five-Year R&D Plan, Annual Operational Plan, research reports, newsletters and application and reporting templates.
You should also check the information we have published under the Information Publication Scheme and FOI disclosure log to see if what you are seeking is already available.
How to make a request
Your request must:
- be in writing
- state that the request is an application for the purposes of the FOI Act
- provide information about the document(s) to assist us to process your request
- provide an address for reply.
You can send your request:
By Post
FOI Contact Officer
Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation
PO Box 610
Kent Town SA 5071
By Email
gwrdc@gwrdc.com.au
If you ask a third party to make an FOI request on your behalf, you need to provide a specific, written authority to send copies of documents to you, care of that person, or to allow that person to inspect copies of documents containing information about you.
If you require assistance with your request, please contact the FOI Contact Officer on 08 8273 0500 or by email at gwrdc@gwrdc.com.au
Fees and charges
There is no application fee for an FOI request.
There are no processing charges for requests for access to documents containing only personal information about you. However, processing charges may apply to other requests. If we decide to impose a charge, we will give you a written estimate and the basis of our calculation. Where the estimated charge is between $20 and $100, we may ask you to pay a deposit of $20, or where the estimated charge exceeds $100, we may ask you to pay a 25% deposit before we process your request.
You can ask for the charge to be waived or reduced for any reason, including financial hardship or on the grounds of public interest. If you do so, you should explain your reasons and you may need to provide some evidence.
What you can expect from us
We will tell you within 14 days that we have received your request. We will also give you an estimate of the charges that apply to your request. We will give you our decision within 30 days unless that time has been extended. If a document contains information about a third party, we will need to consult them and may need to extend the time to give you our decision by another 30 days. We may also seek your agreement to extend the time by up to 30 days if your request is complex.
If you disagree with our decision
When we have made a decision about your FOI request, we will send you a letter explaining our decision and your review and appeal rights.
You can ask for the following decisions to be reviewed if we:
- refuse to give you access to all or part of a document or if we defer giving you access
- impose a charge
- refuse to change or annotate information about you that you claim is incomplete, incorrect, out of date or misleading.
A third party who disagrees with our decision to give you documents that contain information about them can also ask for our decision to be reviewed.
Internal review
You can request in writing that we reconsider our decision through an internal review. An internal review will be conducted by another officer in our agency. We will advise you of our new decision within 30 days of receiving your request.
Information Commissioner review
You can ask the Australian Information Commissioner to review our original decision or our decision on internal review within 60 days of the date of decision (or 30 days after you are notified if you are an affected third party). The Information Commissioner can affirm or vary the decision or substitute a new decision. The Information Commissioner may decide not to conduct a review in certain circumstances. More information is available at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) website at http://www.oaic.gov.au/.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with the way we have handled your request, you can complain to the Australian Information Commissioner who may investigate our actions. More information is available on the OAIC’s website at http://www.oaic.gov.au/. The Commonwealth Ombudsman can also investigate complaints about our actions. However, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Information Commissioner will consult to avoid the same matter being investigated twice.
More information
If you require more information, please contact the FOI Contact Officer on 08 8273 0500 or by email at gwrdc@gwrdc.com.au
Certain documents that we have released under the FOI Act can be obtained on our FOI disclosure log page. Information about our Information Publication Scheme can be obtained here.