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Privacy Policy

The Defence Force Welfare Association (“DFWA”) is the group of organisations made up of:

The National Body (“National”):

  • Defence Force Welfare Association – National Inc (ABN 49 929 713 439); and

The Branches:

  • Defence Force Welfare Association NSW Branch Incorporated (ABN 92 470 854 404)
  • Defence Force Welfare Association Queensland Branch Incorporated (ABN 16 025 333 322)
  • Defence Force Welfare Association Victoria Branch Inc (ABN 78 843 463 975)
  • Defence Force Welfare Association ( WA Branch ) Inc. (ABD 38 284 273 832)

DFWA respects your privacy and is committed to protecting personal information we collect. This policy does not cover personal information about our employees.

Our website is at www.dfwa.org.au.

For what purpose does DFWA collect and hold personal information?

The functions and activities for which we collect and hold personal information include:

  • Managing the membership of DFWA and member participation
  • Holding events such as branch meetings and briefings on current issues
  • Conducting, and making available the results of, research and polls
  • Providing and exchanging information through various channels such as social media sites and our website
  • Lobbying and making submissions to government and others about veteran issues.
  • Carrying out a range of research, data collection and analytic activities to identify members’ needs
  • To provide up-to-date information to support lobbying activity and make submissions on issues and proposed laws.
  • Entering into relationships with sponsors and other partners to financially support DFWA activities.

DFWA holds membership information so it can stay in contact with the member but more specifically so it can send the member the Camaraderie magazine, inform the member about membership events and inform the member about policy and social issues on which DFWA seeks to exert influence and thereby enable members to participate in or contribute to a DFWA campaign on a particular issue. An individual member may at any time request not to receive information or any other publication or communication from DFWA and DFWA will comply with the request within a reasonable period.

When an individual agrees, their name may be included together with other petition supporters in a petition to government or other third party.

What kind of personal information does DFWA collect and hold?

DFWA collects information from an individual that is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, one or more of its functions or activities.

  • To join DFWA a member is asked to provide their full name, date of birth and contact details which generally includes their mailing address, phone numbers and email address.
  • When DFWA runs a campaign, which includes a petition to government or other third party it may ask an individual to support the petition by allowing their name to be included in the petition. When an individual agrees to support the petition and to allow their name to be included in the petition then it is only their name which is included.
  • When DFWA receives a communication via letter, email, and phone or otherwise it may hold a record of that communication to respond to the communication or as a record of the interaction for future legal purposes.
  • We collect and hold information members provide through applications to attend events. This includes, if applicable:
    • Sensitive information such as dietary or mobility requirements.
    • Travel bookings.
    • Image (video or photographs) or sound recordings (but only if you have not opted-out from this).
    • We may keep a record of the events a member has attended.
  • We commission research about members. However, we only collect and hold the information gained from the research in aggregate form and do not connect it with any records we hold about individual members.

Does DFWA collect sensitive information?

DFWA may collect health information in relation to acting as your advocate in dealings with government agencies on your behalf, such as the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Department of Defence, or Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation.

How does DFWA collect and hold personal information?

Where practical, DFWA will collect personal information directly from you. Generally, this collection will occur when you deal with us either in person, by telephone, letter, facsimile, email or when you visit our website.

DFWA may collect personal information about you, when acting as your advocate, from government departments and medical professionals. This will be done only with your formal authorisation.

Information collected relevant to a financial transaction, such as credit card details, are passed through a secure server using the latest 128-bit SSL encryption technology. The 128-bit SSL technology is industry standard. Payments are processed by third party processor (Stripe Payments Australia Pty Ltd ACT 160 180 343) DFWA does not have access to or store your financial information.

Membership information is held on a computer database held by DFWA National and the branch you are a member of, and membership forms are held in a secure facility.

Within DFWA, access to personal information of individuals is restricted to DFWA employees and committee members for whom such access is reasonably necessary for them to carry out one or more of the functions or activities of DFWA. Those employees are bound to comply with relevant state or territory Incorporated Associations Acts and the DFWA privacy policy and risk disciplinary action, including termination, if they fail to do so.

Disclosure (sharing) of Personal Information

State branches. When you apply to join a branch, your information is provided to that branch.

Sensitive information. We only disclose sensitive personal information such as health information for the purposes for which you gave it to us or for directly related purposes you would reasonably expect.

Contractors and partners. We disclose personal information to contracted service providers who assist us with a number of our functions and services including service providers of technology, data processing, contact centre, legal, accounting, business consulting, auditing, archival, delivery, banking, payments, market research, content production and mailing but only for the purpose of fulfilling those services.

Overseas disclosure. We do not disclose sensitive personal information to persons or organisations outside of Australia. Where practical, data stored or processed in cloud services uses Australian data centres.

We also use the personal information about you which we collect or receive being processed, transferred and/or disclosed by us in the following circumstances:

  • each of the circumstances set out in the previous sections;
  • as permitted or required by law;
  • to various regulatory bodies and law enforcement officials and agencies, including to protect against fraud and for related security purposes;
  • to comply with a request from a qualified government department if we are satisfied that they have the authority to make such request; or
  • where we suspect that unlawful activity has been or may be engaged in and the personal information is a necessary part of our investigation or reporting of the matter.

Other than the above, we will not disclose your personal information without your consent unless we reasonably believe that disclosure is necessary to lessen or prevent a threat to life, health or safety or for certain action to be undertaken by an enforcement body (e.g. prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution or punishment of criminal offences), disclosure is authorised or required by law or disclosure is otherwise permitted by applicable privacy laws.

Is it practicable for members to deal with DFWA anonymously?

Generally, this is not practicable when we require personal information to provide services to you or you wish to become a member.

When and how may this policy be changed?

The DFWA privacy policy may be changed periodically to keep it up to date with changes in legislation and the activities and functions of DFWA. Changes to the policy will be incorporated into the privacy policy posted on the DFWA website and may also be notified by email.

Does DFWA receive unsolicited information and if so, how does it deal with it?

Any unsolicited information (such as Facebook and Twitter comments) would not be recorded in relation to a member’s record.

Email

If you send us an email, that address will be recorded automatically by our e-mail messaging system for the purpose of replying to your e-mail. However, for normal communication with you we will use the e-mail address you provide in your membership application/renewal, unless you ask us to use a different e-mail address.

When we send you emails or other electronic messages, we record information about your interactions with the email including when you open the email, what device you’re using, what email client you’re using and what links you click on.

This helps us to better understand what information is of interest to you and to improve the content.

Our Website

This section applies to our website under the domain name dfwa.org.au including any subdomains.

We use Google Analytics to collect a range of information about your interactions with our website. Google Analytics collects the information using several techniques including cookies and Java Script. We also use analytics tools to collect information from the browsers of those who engage with DFWA via social media including Facebook and Twitter.

Messages you post on our members’ forum may be used in a de-identified way in other documents.

The information we collect includes IP address, domain name, date and time of visit, the pages visited and time spent on each page, whether you have visited the site before and what site referred the visitor to the web page. We use this information to evaluate the effectiveness of our website and the level of interest in particular pages or DFWA campaigns.

Information about how Google handles personal information is available at http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

You can opt out of the collection of information via Google Analytics by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Our website may contain links to other sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or policies of those sites and we suggest that you review their privacy policies.

Our Social Media

We participate in social media such as Facebook and Twitter. If we think it is relevant to the quality of service that DFWA provides or its objectives, we sometimes record the nature of the topic discussed by a particular individual and their name and follow up with further conversation offline about which we take notes. Such comments may be used in a de-identified way in other documents.

Social media services also handle your personal information for their own purposes. These sites have their own privacy policies.

Security of Personal Information

We regularly assess the risks of misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure of personal information and ensure that we have adequate measures, including policies, procedures, and technology, to address those risks. For example, we limit staff access to personal information to that which they need to carry out their role. We conduct regular internal and external audits to assess whether we have adequately complied with or implemented these measures.

Retention of Information

We hold most information about members for 7 years after your membership has expired or been cancelled.

How can someone access personal information about them held by DFWA and correct such information?

Members can access their membership information at any time by contacting the branch which they are a member of.

We will ask you to verify your identity to ensure we do not give information to the wrong person.

How can someone complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how will DFWA deal with such a complaint?

Anyone can complain about a breach by DFWA Privacy Principles by contacting the DFWA Privacy Officer at national@dfwa.org.au.

The complaint will be dealt with in a timely manner and confidentially [subject to DFWA being entitled to undertake reasonable investigations and enquiries into the complaint]. DFWA may ask the complainant to put the complaint in writing before dealing with the complaint.