January

Businesses that deal with an individual 's personal information in any way must take steps to deal with the new privacy amendments or risk penalties of up to $1.7 million for breaches by corporations and up to $340,000 for breaches by individuals. The amendments primarily apply to businesses that have an annual turnover of more than $3 million. The Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012 (Cth) essentially rewrites the existing privacy laws. The Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) replace the previous National Privacy Principles (for private entities) and Information Privacy Principles (for public entities). Under the new amendments, the Australian Information Commissioner has enhanced powers to resolve privacy issues, such as investigating privacy breaches on its own motion, accepting enforceable undertakings, seeking civil penalty orders, declaring compensation orders and conducting privacy performance assessments. The credit reporting provisions have also been comprehensively revised to expand the number of entities subject to the credit reporting provisions and include similar requirements to those in the APPs. Credit providers will also be able to access further information when assessing an individual 's credit worthiness. Most businesses that render invoices with deferred payment terms (more than seven days) will be subject to the new credit reporting provisions. The amendments will commence on 12 March 2014.

One of the topics I frequently return to is the risk assessment aspect of a recruiter's job, or the 'defensive' recruitment skills, such as background and reference checking, that are a necessary part of doing a complete job as a recruiter. Unfortunately, there is still an undesirable tendency for these skills to be deemed an 'admin' part of a recruiter's job.

If you currently employ, or are considering employing workers from overseas, you need to be aware of two recent legal developments: the tightening of the rules hiring foreign workers and the potential cost of underpaying workers. A recent media report suggests that there are an estimated 100,000 vacant jobs in Australian agricultural businesses. The shortage of Australian workers who are interested in agricultural work suggests that employers in the agricultural sector will continue to look to foreign labour as a means of filling the gap. While the Federal Government has tightened laws regarding the hiring of overseas labour, the Fair Work Ombudsman has stated that in the last two years it has received in excess of 200 complaints from foreign workers who claim to have been underpaid. A recent decision in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia demonstrates that the Ombudsman and the Courts will not take cases of proven underpayment of foreign workers lightly. Therefore, it is crucial that employers meet their workers ' minimum pay and condition requirements. Employers will also need to demonstrate that they have taken reasonable steps to verify that a worker is not an unlawful non-citizen and not a lawful non-citizen in breach of a work-related visa condition. Individuals who fail to do so may be fined $15,300 or imprisoned for up to 2 years. A company may be fined up to $76,500 for a single offence.