Privacy policy

About Seqwater

The Queensland Bulk Water Supply Authority (ABN 75 450 239 876, trading as Seqwater) is a statutory authority established by the Queensland Government under the South East Queensland Water (Restructuring) Act 2007 (Qld).

Seqwater is proud to deliver a safe, sustainable and valued bulk water supply for more than 3.6 million people across South East Queensland. It also provides essential flood mitigation services, supports the management of catchment health, offers community recreation facilities and supplies water to irrigators and industry.

This Policy sets out how Seqwater handles your personal information.

Legal Obligations

When we handle personal information, we must comply with the Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld) (IP Act) and the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs).

What Personal Information Do We Collect and Hold?

We collect and hold your personal information when we reasonably need it to carry out our functions and activities, manage our business, or comply with the law; see ‘Why do we collect personal information’, below.

For example:

  • when you communicate with us: we may collect your name, address, telephone number, email address, or other information that you provide
  • when your organisation works with us: we may collect the name, job title and contact information of the organisation’s relevant representatives
  • when you apply to work with us: we will collect your name, personal contact details, work history and qualifications, and reference information
  • when we employ you: we will collect information that we need to manage our professional relationship, such as your name, personal contact details, work history and qualifications, information about your work and performance, payment information, and health information relevant to your work or required for workplace safety.

Cookies and web analytics

When you visit our websites, we may use ‘cookies’, ‘pixels’ and similar tracking processes to collect non-personal information and statistics about your devices, IP address, and which pages you visit. This information doesn’t identify you. We use this information to better understand how you use our website and to make our website function better.

What if you don't want to give us your personal information?

Where we can and when it complies with the law, we give people the option of not identifying themselves or using a pseudonym.

However, in some cases, if you don't give us your personal information, we may not be able to give you the service you want or respond to your request.

How do we collect personal information?

We collect personal information from you when you interact with us or use our services. For example:

  • if you contact us via phone, email or post,
  • apply for a job with us
  • use our mobile apps
  • when we are required by law, for example, under work health and safety legislation.

We also collect information about landholders next to or nearby Seqwater’s assets (such as dams, reservoirs and treatment plants), directly from landholders and public records.

Using and Disclosing Personal Information

We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information to carry out our functions and activities, manage our business and comply with the law.

Purposes of collection

For example, we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for the following purposes:

  • to confirm your identity when you contact us
  • to manage your requests, enquiries or complaints
  • to provide our products and services to you
  • to better understand your needs
  • to improve our products and services to tell you about Seqwater's products and services
  • to conduct maintenance activities and attend to any safety or emergency issue
  • to hire new staff
  • to manage our staff to handle payments and payment issues
  • to comply with the law
  • to do system troubleshooting and maintenance.

Third Parties

We sometimes partner with other organisations or hire companies to help us do our work (Third Parties). These Third Parties may collect your personal information on our behalf and provide it to us. We may also share your personal information with these Third Parties. These Third Parties may include:

  • information technology and data storage providers;
  • to our professional advisors including lawyers, consultants, accountants and auditors
  • to Seqwater's responsible Queensland Government Ministers;
  • regulatory bodies or government agencies (such as the Australian Taxation Office), when required or authorised by law
  • law enforcement agencies, including to assist in the prevention, investigation or prosecution of criminal activities
  • other entities for the purposes of collaborating with Seqwater in relation to Seqwater's statutory functions, drought response and water security planning and operations.

When we work with third parties, we take steps to ensure they handle your personal information safely and responsibly.

In some cases, our Third Parties are outside of Queensland or Australia. When we do this, we take steps to ensure that your personal information is handled in in a way that is consistent with our legal obligations.

We may also report de-identified statistics to the Queensland Government when required.

Retention

We only keep your personal information for as long as we need it to do our work. If we no longer need it, we’ll destroy or de-identify it.

Handling correspondence

As Seqwater is a Queensland Government statutory authority, all correspondence you send to us (via post, email or our website) will be a public record. Seqwater will keep and handle all correspondence as required by the Public Records Act 2002 (Qld) and other relevant legislation.

Any personal information contained in that correspondence will be dealt with in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the provisions of the IP Act.

Security and destruction of personal information

We take steps to protect the personal information that we hold. These include physical security, technical and cyber-security controls and governance controls.

In addition, several Seqwater facilities (such as our offices, dams, reservoirs and treatment plants) are protected by video and other surveillance systems. This helps us provide a safe and secure water supply, work environment, and recreation and catchment areas. We use surveillance systems to monitor and manage assets (natural and built), deter criminal behaviour and to identify offenders. The information recorded by our surveillance systems may be provided to third parties, including law enforcement authorities, to assist with investigations and prosecutions. We may also use surveillance systems for employment or safety purposes.

Access to and amendment of your personal information

We take steps to ensure that the personal information we collect, use and disclose is accurate, complete, and up-to-date.

You have the right to access and correct the personal information we hold about you. To do this, please visit the Right to Information page on the Seqwater website.

Complaints

If you feel that we have not met our obligations in how we handle your personal information, you have the right to make a complaint to us. See the ‘Contact Us’ section, below.

We will:

  • keep a record of your complaint;
  • write to you to acknowledge your complaint;
  • investigate your complaint (including, for example, gathering the relevant facts, locating and reviewing relevant documents and speaking to relevant individuals); and
  • write to you with our final response, including our view on whether we have not complied with this policy or relevant privacy laws, and what we will do to fix the issue.

In most cases, we’ll give you a final response within 45 calendar days of receiving your complaint. If we can’t give you a response within this time, we’ll contact you to tell you why, and work out a new timeframe with you.

What else can you do?

If you are not satisfied with how we have managed your complaint, you can make a complaint to the Office of the Information Commissioner Queensland:

Contact Us

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns about the way we handle your personal information, or if you want to make a complaint.

  • Write to: The Privacy Contact Officer
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Post: PO BOX 328
    IPSWICH QLD 4002
  • Phone: 1300 737 928