Privacy Policy

Personal Information refers to any information or any opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not and whether recorded in a material form or not; and

Sensitive Information refers to information about a person's racial or ethnic origin, political opinions or associations, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, trade and professional memberships, sexual orientation or practices, criminal record or health, genetic or biometric information.

We may need to collect personal information about you and others, including names, addresses, phone numbers and other contact details as well as details regarding bank accounts and credit card information. We may also collect details of your age, sex, religious or cultural beliefs, hobbies and other personal information about you.

Personal information may be collected by us:
(a) when we are contacted by you in person, over the telephone or on the internet regarding our organisation and its activities;
(b) when you make a purchase on our online store;
(c) when you make a donation online, in person or via post; or
(d) when we respond to an inquiry, where we consider personal details are required or appropriate to fulfil the inquiry.

We may need to collect personal information so we can:

(a) identify you;
(b) conduct our operations and provide our services in a professional and efficient manner;
(c) develop and implement initiatives to improve our products and services;
(d) process donations and complete financial transactions;
(e) respond to your questions, comments or requests;
(f)  undertake direct marketing activities;
(g) provide you with news and/or updates of our operations and activities; or
(h) carry out any other purpose identified by us at the time of collection.

If you do not provide us with all the personal information we request from you we may be unable to communicate or otherwise engage with you.

To ensure we are meeting the needs and requirements of our website users, and to develop our online services, we may collect data through the use of a data analytic program. We may use this program to track use of our website, and to compile statistics on visits to the site in an aggregated form and log anonymous information such as the postcode of a user's server.

When you visit our website, our various internet service provider(s) and computer server logs the following information which is provided by your browser for statistical purposes only:

(a) the date and time of your visit;
(b) the address of the pages accessed and the documents downloaded;
(c) the type of browser and operating system you are using;
(d) your top level domain name;
(e) the address of the referring site; and
(f) your server's IP address.

No attempt will be made to identify users or their browsing activities, except in the unlikely event of an investigation where a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant.

We may use your personal information (like your postal or email address or fixed line or mobile telephone number), other than sensitive information, to advise you of new products, services and marketing initiatives that we think may be of interest to you.

We will usually collect the personal information we use for direct marketing directly from you, in circumstances where you would reasonably expect us to use that information for direct marketing. We will provide you with a simple means by which you may easily request not to receive direct marketing communications from us. 

If we collect the personal information we use for direct marketing from someone other than you, we will generally obtain your consent to use or disclose your personal information for direct marketing. The law allows us not to obtain that consent if it is impracticable. In either case, we will provide you with a simple means by which you may easily request not to receive direct marketing communications from us.  

We will not disclose personal information to a third party to enable that party to direct market their products or services to an individual, unless that individual has expressly consented to that disclosure.

In the usual course of our operations, we will not disclose your personal information to third parties without your consent except in the following circumstances:

(a) the disclosure is for the primary purpose for which the information was collected;
(b) the disclosure is to our agent or contractor, in which case we will require them to disclose and use the personal information only for the purpose for which it was disclosed;
(c) the disclosure is to a related body corporate;
(d) the disclosure is reasonably necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal or equitable claim; or
(e) the disclosure is permitted, required or authorised by law.

We may need to collect sensitive information about you.

Under the Act we are entitled to collect sensitive information about you or others for a number of reasons, including where collection is necessary for the conduct of our operations.

Where we are required and it is practicable to do so, we will seek your consent before collecting your sensitive information and inform you of the purpose at the same time. Your consent to collection of your sensitive information may be implied in limited circumstances.

We will generally allow an individual to access any personal information that we hold about them on request subject to any restrictions on access. We will try to give the individual concerned access in a form and manner that suits their needs. To request such access please contact us. Our contact details appear at the end of this policy.

We may ask you to verify your identity before we disclose any personal information. In order for us to successfully retrieve your records, please provide us with as much detail as you can about the particular personal information you wish to access or correct. Reasonable steps will be taken to ensure that any personal information collected will be held secure and only accessible by authorised persons.

If you wish to have your personal information removed from our database, we will take reasonable steps to comply with your request unless we need to keep your information for legal reasons.

We are entitled to restrict access to personal information in accordance with the APPs.

You may not be allowed access to personal information we hold where access would reveal evaluative information generated by us in connection with a commercially sensitive decision-making process. Instead, we may give you an explanation for the decision, rather than direct access to the information.

If we have given you such an explanation and you believe that direct access to the evaluative information is necessary to provide a reasonable explanation of the reasons for the decision, we will, at your request, review the decision. Personnel other than the original decision-maker will conduct the review.

Wherever direct access by you is impractical or inappropriate, we should consider together whether the use of a mutually agreed intermediary would allow sufficient access to meet both our needs and concerns.

Other instances where it may not be appropriate to provide you with access to the personal information we hold, include where:

(a) providing access would pose a serious and imminent threat to the life, health or safety of any individual;
(b) providing access would have an unreasonable impact upon the privacy of others;
(c) the request for access is frivolous or vexatious; or
(d) the information relates to an anticipated or existing legal dispute between you and us and would not be accessible by the process of discovery in that dispute.

An individual will not incur charges for lodging a request to access personal information. However, we may levy a reasonable charge for providing access to that information. We will provide an estimate of any charge on request, or if it appears to us that the work will be onerous or otherwise warrants a charge.

We may transfer personal information overseas if necessary for the conduct of our operations. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that an overseas recipient does not breach the Act in relation to the disclosed personal information unless:

(a) we reasonably believe that the recipient of the information is subject to legal obligations that  have the effect of protecting the information in a way that, overall, is at least substantially similar to protection under the APPs and there are mechanisms that you can access to enforce that protection; or
(b) we are given consent by you to do so, expressly or by implication after you are expressly informed by us that if you consent we will not be required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipient does not breach the APPs in relation to the information; or
(c) we are legally authorised or required to do so.

This site contains links to other sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.

Our Privacy Policy covers the privacy practices for our website and Social Media Pages, and does not extend to external links to other sites.

When you leave our Website (www.columban.org.au) you will be going to sites that are beyond our control. These third party websites may collect your personal information and data, send their own cookies to users, or solicit your personal information.

We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any website you link to from our website.

We are committed to maintaining: 

(a) safeguards to protect personal information against unauthorised use, disclosure, access, interference, modification, destruction and accidental loss;
(b) industry standards for security and protection  of personal information; and
(c) internal policies regarding the management of personal information and staff training to ensure compliance with these policies.

However, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us. There is a risk that any communication or transaction between us and you  may be intercepted, used or modified by third parties.

If there is a loss, or unauthorised access or disclosure of your personal information that is likely to result in serious harm to you, we will investigate and notify you and the Australian Information Commissioner as soon as practicable, in accordance with the Act.

We have put in place reasonable security measures to protect the payment information you provide when accessing the secure pages of our website. However, the internet exists across open public networks that may not be secure or private.

If you do not wish to make your purchase or financial contribution online, please contact us to receive a hard copy form.

You may request us to deal with you anonymously or through a pseudonym. We will accommodate your request if it is lawful and practical for us to do so.

We will destroy or de-identify any personal information that we hold which is no longer needed for any purpose permitted by the APPs unless we are required by law to retain such personal information.

We ask that you tell us of any changes to the personal information we hold about you. We will then take reasonable steps to update or correct the information in the manner requested. If we consider that the personal information we retain does not require amendment, we will annotate the request on our files.

We may update or change this policy. When we do so, we will publish the current policy on our website. Please check our website to review this policy regularly.

If you have any suggestions or concerns that are not addressed in this privacy policy, please contact us. Our contact details are listed at the end of this policy.

We are committed to constantly reviewing our procedures so that personal information is treated appropriately.

If you feel that we have failed to deal with your personal information in accordance with the APPs or this policy, please speak to us so that we have an opportunity to resolve the issue to your satisfaction.

We will manage the complaint process by:

(a) listening to your concerns and grievances regarding our handling of personal information;
(b) discussing with you the ways in which we can remedy the situation; and
(c) putting in place an action plan to resolve your complaint and improve our information handling procedures (if appropriate).

If this process does not result in an outcome that is satisfactory to you, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's Office. We will work together with the Information Commissioner's Office to resolve the issues between us.

Contact details for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner are: 
Street address: Level 3, 175 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000 
Telephone: 1300 363 992 (cost of a local call anywhere in Australia) 
TTY: 133 677 followed by 1300 363 992
Post: GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001
Facsimile: +61 2 9284 9666 
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au

Further information about privacy and your rights can be obtained at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's website (www.oaic.gov.au).

If you wish to access any personal information that we hold about you, or have a query about this policy, please contact St Columbans Mission Society:

Telephone: +61 (3) 9375 9475 
Email: info@columban.org.au
Post: Columban Mission Centre, PO Box 752, Niddrie VIC 3042 Australia