HIA collects information from you in the course of your use of HIA’s products, services and website and to the extent it is reasonably necessary for us to carry out or undertake one or more of our functions or activities.

The type of information that we collect and hold may depend on your relationship with us.

HIA collects personal information in a number of ways including when persons:

• apply for membership
• enrol for a training course or qualification
• browse our online services or otherwise interact with our website
• directly interact , contact or communicate with HIA including by the phone, in person, via email or otherwise where personal details are provided
• interact with us on our social media, such as liking our posts, commenting on our posts, or private messaging us on our social media
• use, receive, purchase, order, pay or subscribe to our products or services
• attend a HIA event
• subscribe to a HIA mailing list
• lodge a complaint against a HIA member
• participate in market research or surveys
• enter HIA competitions or promotions
• apply for employment at HIA or are an external contractor or consultant tendering for or rendering services to HIA; or voluntarily provide personal information to us.

As HIA’s products, services and website change and evolve over time, this is not an exhaustive list of the circumstances under which HIA may collect personal information.

While some of the information collected by HIA is required for membership or as part of our business activities and services, other information may be voluntarily given by the individual.

The type of personal information that HIA may collect could include, but is not limited to, the following:

• contact details including:
• date of birth and gender
• details about your business
• your occupation, trade and qualifications
• occupational license or registration details (if applicable)
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses attended
• Unique Student Identifier (USI)
• language, literacy and numeracy levels
• ethnicity
• work history
• background checks (such as National Criminal Checks or Working with Children checks)
• emergency contact details
• superannuation and taxation information
• bankruptcy, insolvency and credit reporting information
• financial and payment information (including credit card and banking information)
• photos and sound recordings
• dietary preferences and requirements
• website usage information
• preference information, such as your areas of interest and the communications you receive from us
• information you provide to us for the purposes of attending meetings, events, webinars, and other programs
• any other information relating to you (or other individuals), which you may provide to us.

HIA will not ordinarily ask you to provide sensitive information. However some information held by HIA may fall within the definition of ‘sensitive information’. In such circumstances, we will only collect sensitive information in circumstances where:

• it is reasonably necessary for one or more of the services we provide or functions we carry out; and
• you consent to the collection of the information; or
• a permitted general situation exists; or
• a permitted health situation exists: or
• the collection of the information is required or authorised by or under an Australian law or a court/tribunal order.

HIA may use and disclose your personal information for the primary purpose for which it is collected, for reasonably expected, incidental or related secondary purposes and in other circumstances authorised by law.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of some primary and secondary purposes for which HIA may use and disclose personal information:

• to keep a membership database
• to verify identity
• to verify eligibility for membership
• processing training enrolment forms
• registering individuals for HIA events
• to carry on a business of providing products and services to HIA members and other customers
• to process payment for HIA membership, services, products, and events
• to keep a record of business transactions for necessary purposes such as orders, accounts, audit, tax, refunds and exchanges
• for employment and recruitment purposes
• to analyse our business transactions in order to improve our products and services
• meeting our contractual or statutory obligations under various government funding or service delivery agreements
• to communicate with you in relation to:
• your queries, requests and feedback
• material changes to our website, terms of use, privacy policies or other conditions, and
• matters relating to your involvement in the operations of HIA via the applicable or appropriate medium. This could include email, SMS, or communicating with you via any other contact details provided to us
• to send you, or for our third party partners to send you, information about products, services, events and promotions that may be of interest to you based on your needs or preferences
• to investigate complaints about HIA members
• to administer and improve the HIA website
• to administer surveys and undertake research
• to prevent and detect fraud
• to comply with any law, statute, rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination, decision or direction of a regulator, or in co-operation with any governmental authority; and
• as permitted under the law.

Subject to the requirements of the APP, if you would reasonably expect the information to be used or disclosed for another purpose, HIA may also use or disclose it for that purpose.

HIA may disclose personal information to third parties, from time to time, to assist us in conducting our business, including to:

• technology service providers including internet service providers or cloud service providers
• third party software platforms and websites including those used for virtual events, event management, student enrolment and management, online training, workforce management (such as Rapid Global) and other databases
• couriers such as Australia Post
• data processors that analyse our website traffic or usage (see paragraph 7.3 below)
• independent contractors, agents and others that perform functions on our behalf, such as mailouts, debt collection, training, marketing or advertising
• our financial institution(s) and your financial institution
• our payment gateways such as Braintree
• relevant Commonwealth and State or Territory government departments and authorised agencies as required by law or contractual arrangements in place with those bodies
• where a person consents to the disclosure in writing or where that person would reasonably expect HIA to do so
• HIA’s sponsors, joint venture partners and related bodies corporate; and
• to persons, entities or courts as required under the law.

HIA, occasionally receives requests from other organisations to send information to our members or customers. If we consider that this information is of relevance, our general policy is to send this information directly to our members or customers on behalf of those organisations. On occasion, it may however be more appropriate for these organisations to directly contact our members or customers.

We may seek your consent to disclose your personal information to other organisations in some circumstances, depending on the purpose for which we collect that information and our understanding of your reasonable expectations in respect to our use of that information.

HIA will not disclose your personal information to third parties for payment, profit or advantage without your consent. 

HIA may use non-sensitive personal information you gave us for the purpose of promoting and marketing our business, services and/or products to you if:

• you reasonably expected us to use that information for promoting and marketing our membership activities and business services and/or products to you; and
• we provide you a simple method to opt-out.

HIA will not send you unsolicited commercial electronic messages in contravention of the Spam Act. We will not contact you to promote or market our business or services and/or products if you requested us not to.

We may request our related parties to contact you about services and/or products that may be of interest to you.

We may use the services of certain third party service providers and contractors which may have offices or other operations outside of Australia. As a result, some personal information may be disclosed to overseas recipients in the course of our ordinary business operations including for the purposes of data storage and management.

HIA may collect, and you consent to us collecting, information relating to you, such as data relating to your activity on our website and/or social media platforms.

This includes:

• the Internet Protocol address and a component of the domain name used (e.g. .com or .net)
• the type of browser and operating system you used
• the date and time you visited our website and/or social media platforms
• the web pages or services you accessed at our website
• the time spent on individual pages and our website overall; and
• which files you downloaded; and information about your computer and internet connections using cookies.

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or other web-accessing device by HIA’s website that allow to recognise and maintain your preferences when returning to our website.

Cookie technology collects ‘clickstream’ data, which does not include personally identifiable information, but which reflects your activities on our website.

We use cookies in many ways including:

• authentication cookies that monitor whether you are logged in or not
• session cookies that allow you to remain logged in and keep track of your activities until the browser shuts down
• persistent cookies that help us monitor our services by recording your browser activities and which do not expire upon browser shut down
• improving the website’s performance by reporting any errors that occur
• provide statistics about how the website is used
• remembering settings that you used on our website
• flash cookies to personalise your experience
• linking to relevant social networks. Examples of such social networks may include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tiktok, What’s App and others; and providing ads that are tailored to you.

You may delete cookies in your browser or instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our website.

HIA may use third party analytics tools (‘Analytics’) to help measure traffic, usage trends and online behaviour. Analytics collect information such as your IP address, type of device, operating system, referring URLs, date and time of page visits, and which pages you visit the most.

The analytics used by HIA may include, but are not limited to Google Analytics, Facebook Analysis and Adobe Analytics. These providers will have their own privacy policies.

We may establish relationships with business partners and sponsors that allow visitors to the HIA website to link directly to sites operated by these partners.

Some of these sites may be ‘co-branded’ with HIA’s logo; however, these sites may not be operated or maintained by or on our behalf. These sites may collect personal information from you that may be shared with us. This Policy will apply to any personal information we obtain in this manner.

We are not responsible or liable for the content or practices of web sites operated by third parties that are linked to our sites. Unless expressly advised, HIA does not endorse, approve or recommend the services or products provided on third party websites.

HIA is committed to ensuring that the personal information we collect is secure.

In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place physical, electronic and operational procedures to safeguard and secure personal information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.

We use a database management system to store most of the personal information and it contains security features, such as encryption, firewall and anti-virus, to ensure the protection and integrity of our data.

We however cannot guarantee the security of any information that is transmitted to or by us over the internet. The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at the users own risk. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you the personal information we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this policy.

If you make payment to HIA via credit card authorisation or direct debit arrangements, HIA uses third party payment gateways, such as Braintree, to process your payment. These payment gateways temporarily store your credit card/ direct debit data. It is encrypted through the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).

You may request access to your personal information that we hold and we will:

• verify your identity
• inform you of, and if you agree, charge you the reasonable cost of meeting your request, if any, but not for the request itself; and
• on receipt of payment, if any, and within a reasonable period of time, comply with your request.

We may refuse to allow you access to your personal information if we are not required to do so under the APP.

You may request to correct your personal information that we hold and we will update your personal information so that it is up-to-date, accurate, complete, relevant and not misleading.

HIA Members may change their details online on our website.

If you believe we have breached the APP or a registered Australian Privacy Principles Code, you may lodge a complaint as follows:

• firstly, contact us in writing to the email or postal address in clause 9.3. You should include the following in your complaint:
• your contact details
• the section or provision of the APP or Code that you believe we breached; and
• our practice or policy that you believe breaches the relevant APP or Code
• you must allow us a reasonable time, about 30 days, to reply to your complaint; and
• secondly, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner if:
• you are not satisfied with our response; or
• we do not respond to you within a reasonable time without sufficient explanation.