Privacy complaints increase

The Privacy Commissioner says a long wait to investigate breaches of privacy has not stopped people from lodging complaints.

More than 880 complaints were lodged with the Privacy Commission in the year to June.

The Commissioner, Bruce Slane, said that was around 80 more complaints than the previous year.

He said the delay in investigating complaints does not appear to have stopped people from taking cases to the Commission.

Mr Slane said despite the backlog in complaints, almost one third are resolved within three months.

He said most were dealt with through a mediation process, with only 3.5 per cent of all complaints proceeding to the Complaints Review Tribunal.

Complaints about police (58 in all) made up the bulk of those received this year.

Mr Slane said some agencies attracted complaints just because of their nature. Government departments appeared to be improving their methods for dealing with complaints.

"In last year's report I observed that my dealings with the police were less than satisfactory. I am pleased to say there has been some improvement in the situation."

He said the time between when a complaint was received and assigned to an investigating officer had dropped from an 18-month average to 12 months. Despite the backlog one third of cases were cleared within three months.

Complicated cases required a large amount of evidence collection from witnesses and contributed to delays.

Mr Slane said about 39 per cent of complaints were by people wanting access to personal or health information and 38 per cent were for inappropriate disclosure of information.