The Australian Golf Course Superintendents Association (“AGCSA”) takes its obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (as amended by the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012 (Cth)) (the "Privacy Act") seriously and is strongly committed to protecting the privacy of information collected about its members and other clients. Protecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your Personal Information is fundamental to our business practices. This Privacy Policy (last updated 22 April 2014) provides an overview of AGCSA practices in the collection and use of Personal Information that is covered by the Privacy Act. It is not intended to cover categories of Personal Information that are not covered by the Privacy Act. This Privacy Policy sets out:
"Personal Information" is information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information is true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not.
The type of Personal Information the AGCSA collects and holds includes basic contact, industry and personal details, which enables the AGCSA to deliver services to members. Personal Information that the AGCSA collects and holds includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Any Personal Information collected has been directly supplied by you to the AGCSA when completing application forms, subscription forms, registration forms or various member detail forms. It may also be collected from other communications material you send to us (letters, e-mails etc), over the phone or in person.
The AGCSA may also collect Personal Information about you via third parties including from our partner associations and businesses.
In some circumstances we may receive Personal Information that we have not requested. If this occurs, we will comply with our obligations under the Privacy Act. You acknowledge that we may de-identify and/or destroy this information unless we are required to keep it by law.
We may collect data relating to your activity on our website (including IP addresses) via tracking technologies such as cookies, or we may collect information from you in response to a survey. We generally use this information to report statistics, analyse trends, administer our services, diagnose problems and target and improve the quality of our products and services.
Cookies are small text files that are transferred to a user's computer hard drive by a website for the purpose of storing information about a user's identity, browser type or website visiting patterns. You can adjust your internet browser to disable cookies, however the AGCSA may not be able to provide you with all the service or functionality you require on our website if you choose to do so.
We use Google and/or other third-party service providers to serve ads on our behalf across the Internet and sometimes on our website. They may collect anonymous information about your visits to our website and your interaction with our products and services. They may also use information about your visits to the website and other websites to target advertisements for goods and services in order to provide more relevant advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.
The AGCSA collects Personal Information to communicate with and deliver products and services to its members, carry out its functions and activities, and meet any regulatory requirements which apply to our association.
You have the option to deal with us anonymously or by using a pseudonym. However, you acknowledge that where this is impractical (for example when you register as a member with us) or where the law or a court order provides otherwise we are not required to provide these options to you.
If you choose not to provide your Personal Information to the AGCSA, we may not be able to undertake certain activities for you such as providing you with requested information, products or services.
The AGCSA will utilise Personal Information for the following purposes:
The AGCSA may use your Personal Information to provide you with direct marketing materials if you would reasonably expect us to or if you consent to receive direct marketing materials. We will seek your consent to provide you with direct marketing materials if we have obtained your Personal Information from a third party. Direct marketing material may include promotional material about the AGCSA or the products or services offered by the AGCSA.
You may opt out of receiving direct marketing material by contacting us in any of the ways specified in the directing marketing materials or as set out below under 'How to contact us and more information'.
The AGCSA treats all Personal Information we hold about you as confidential. This applies except where disclosure of your Personal Information is necessary to provide our primary services, where required to do so by law or where your consent has been provided. On occasions we may employ other companies to perform functions on our behalf, such as printing of lists, name cards etc. In these instances we may disclose information to them for the purpose of carrying out these tasks. In these situations we ensure appropriate confidentiality procedures are in place to protect your privacy and provide third parties only with the information required to perform their function.
We do not currently disclose your Personal Information outside of Australia. In future we may choose to disclose your Personal Information outside of Australia to an entity in a foreign country and if practical will provide you with details of these countries when this occurs. It is possible that such entity may be subject to foreign laws that do not provide the same level of protection of Personal Information as in Australia. We will take steps to ensure that these overseas entities are obliged to protect the privacy and security of your Personal Information and use it only for the purpose for which it is disclosed.
If the AGCSA has accurate Personal Information about you, it enables us to provide you with the best possible service. We take reasonable steps to ensure that your Personal Information is accurate, complete and up to date whenever we collect or use it. If you find that the Personal Information we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, please contact us immediately. Alternatively, you may correct this yourself through the member services section of the website.
You may access limited Personal Information through our secure the member services section on our website. Alternatively, on request, we will provide you with access to your Personal Information unless providing you with access would unreasonably impact upon the privacy of others or is not otherwise permitted under the Australian Privacy Principles or at law. Your request will be dealt with in a reasonable time and we may charge you a small administration fee for sending the information to you. If we refuse your request, we will provide you with written reasons for the refusal.
We provide the opportunity for individuals to choose not to receive correspondence (eg: The Cut e-mail newsletter) through an opt-out system, or by requesting that your details be removed from our database through the AGCSA office.
The AGCSA takes reasonable steps to protect any Personal Information that we hold about you from misuse interference and loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We protect your privacy by restricting access to your Personal Information to those staff or authorised office bearers who need it, either to process information or to provide you with membership services. Our staff and office bearers are responsible for handling Personal Information in accordance with the Privacy Act.
Your Personal Information may be stored as hardcopy documents, or as electronic data. We maintain physical security over our paper and electronic data stores and premises. We also maintain computer and network security. For example, we use firewalls (security measures for the Internet) and other security systems such as user identifiers and passwords to control access to computer systems.
We will keep your Personal Information only for as long as required for our business purposes and
otherwise as required by Australian law.
Where we no longer need to keep your Personal Information, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify your Personal Information.
If you wish to have your Personal Information destroyed or de-identified, please let us know and we will take reasonable steps to do so (unless we need to keep it for legal, auditing or internal risk management reasons).
If you believe that the privacy of your Personal Information has been compromised, you are entitled to complain. If you have a complaint, in the first instance please contact the AGCSA by phone. If your complaint is not resolved to your satisfaction, forward a written complaint to:
A written complaint must include a return address, and identify the conduct that is the basis for the complaint. There are no fees for lodging a complaint.
For further information on the AGCSA’s Privacy Policy please contact:
You can find out more information about the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles from the Australian Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner may be contacted at www.oaic.gov.au (email - enquiries@oaic.gov.au).