Draft National Strategy for Mitigating Vessel Strike of Marine Mega-fauna

Respondents should be aware that the Department must comply with a range of legal and administrative requirements of the Commonwealth designed to promote transparency and accountability, including requirements to disclose information to the Commonwealth Parliament and its committees.

This means that despite any agreement by the Department to maintain confidentiality over information provided by a respondent, the Department may be required (and reserves the right) to disclose, or allow at any time the disclosure of, any information contained in or relating to any responses in accordance with these requirements.

All responses received are therefore considered public documents, unless it is agreed that part or all of the response is ‘confidential information’.

The Department will only consider a request for confidentiality where:

1. the information to be protected is identified in specific rather than global terms;
2. the information is by its nature confidential; and
3. disclosure would cause detriment to the Commonwealth, or the respondent, or a third party identified by the respondent.

If a respondent believes that any information contained within its response is confidential including ‘commercial-in-confidence’ information, the respondent must:

1. clearly identify this information;
2. provide reasons why this information should be treated as confidential; and
3. provide two versions of the submission, one with the confidential information removed for publication.

The Department may publish responses received on the draft Guideline in full on the Department’s website (including any personal information of the author and/or third parties contained in the response).

The Department may, in its discretion, decide not to publish or to publish an edited version of a submission where the content may be considered defamatory, offensive or is otherwise of no benefit to the consultation process. Cover sheets will not be published.

In submitting a response and completing the cover sheet, respondents consent to the Department using personal information* submitted for the purposes of:

1. developing the proposed Guideline (including the further development of discussion papers and other documents that may be released to the public);
2. providing respondents with updates and information on the development and implementation of the proposed Guideline, if requested;
3. disclosure of personal information* in a response to this Information Paper by the publication of the response on the Department’s website;
4. any disclosure of personal information that the Department is required to make by law;
5. disclosure to State and Territory departments and agencies for programme purposes (which may relate to development, assessment and review of the proposed Guideline), provided that the Commonwealth removes names and addresses of respondents and third-parties included in or provided with responses; and
6. any purpose related or incidental to those purposes specified in paragraphs (a) to (e) (inclusive).

Where a response includes personal information* of a third party, respondents are responsible for ensuring that the relevant third party is aware of and understands this privacy notice, and consents to use and disclosure of their personal information by the Commonwealth for the purposes specified in this notice. Where respondents are unable to obtain the consent of the third party, the respondent must not include the personal information of the third party in the response.

The Department will store and use the personal information* collected during this consultation process in a manner consistent with its obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Department’s privacy policy.

The Department’s privacy policy contains details about how respondents may access and make corrections to personal information that the Department holds about the respondent, how respondents may make a complaint about a breach of an Australian Privacy Principle, and how the Department will deal with that complaint.

A copy of the Department’s privacy policy is available at: http://www.environment.gov.au/privacy-policy.

*NOTE: The term ‘personal information’ has the meaning given in section 6 of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), i.e. information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether or not the information or opinion is true or recorded in a material form.

Participating in this consultation process will not affect ownership of any intellectual property rights in responses, namely:

• where a respondent owns intellectual property rights in his/her/its response, the respondent will continue to own those intellectual property rights; and
• where a third party owns intellectual property rights in material included in the response, the third party will continue to own those intellectual property rights.

In submitting a response to this consultation process, respondents:

• in the case of intellectual property rights owned by the respondent in the response, are deemed to have granted to the Commonwealth, and
• in the case of intellectual property rights owned by a third party in the response, must procure for the Commonwealth a grant of,

a perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, royalty free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify and communicate the content of the response for developing the proposed Guideline (including the further development of discussion papers and other consultative documents to be released to the public) and any other incidental or related purpose