The Place of Privacy in Data Protection Law

The concept of privacy has rarely featured explicitly in Australian law and legal discourse. The modest prominence it currently enjoys is due mainly to the enactment and gradual extension in coverage of data protection legislation, most notably in the form of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This is not to say that the interest in privacy remains unprotected by other elements of the law in Australia, but that the protection afforded by these elements tends to omit express reference to privacy. In this article, I examine the relationship between the concept of privacy and data protection laws.* 1 In particular, I question the almost universal consensus that data protection legislation exists largely to protect the ‘privacy’ of individual persons. This depiction of the rationale of data protection legislation tends to be accepted without serious analysis of its veracity. It is my contention that it is somewhat flawed.