The Privacy Commissioner can help if an organisation will not recognise your rights under the Privacy Act.
Under the Privacy Act you have a right to request your personal information (including personal information in records about you) held by organisations.
Organisations include government agencies, small and large businesses, schools, charities, and community groups. The Privacy Act does not usually cover when a person collects personal information as part of their personal, family or household affairs.
Personal information includes any information about you and information that could identify you.
The Privacy Act does not usually cover domestic situations. Domestic situations are situations that involve your family or other personal relationships.
The Privacy Act sets rules which organisations must follow, so that:
The organisation must have a lawful reason for refusing to:
If they do not have a lawful reason for refusing your request, you can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner’s office.
Generally, the Privacy Commissioner will only investigate a complaint if you have made a complaint to the organisation first.
To contact the Privacy Commissioner’s office, you can:
An access direction is a binding notice to an organisation that requires them to release your records.
The Commissioner can issue an access direction if they decide that you have the right to some, or all, of the records you requested.
The access direction will tell the organisation:
You can read the Access Directions Guidelinesopen_in_new which have been issued by the Privacy Commissioner.
If you request records held by a court, from a case where you were not the defendant or plaintiff, the judicial officer (usually a judge) of the court may choose to deny your request.
If you are a survivor of abuse in care and you are requesting court records about you, the courts will generally grant you access to the documents, especially if this is to support a claim.
If you request court records from any other organisation, for example Disability Support Services, normal Privacy Act and Official Information Act (OIA) rules apply, unless there is a court order or rule preventing them from providing these records to you.
Learn more about requesting court records.
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This Easy Read is about:
and
Here records means the information an organisation has kept / made about a person.
The Privacy Commissioner deals with complaints about your rights to get your personal information.
Here in the care or guardianship of others means when an organisation is put in charge of a person and decides things like:
A guardian is an adult put in charge of the care of a person.
A guardian should:
This Easy Read webpage is on the website Kōnae – My Records Guide.
Kōnae – My Records Guide is a website that supports you to get your records from when you were in care.
The website is called Kōnae for short.
The Citizens Advice Bureau is the kaitiaki / guardian of the Kōnae website.
The Citizens Advice Bureau provides free advice to people about things like:
Rights are things that you should get to live a good life.
For example everyone has a right to things like:
The Privacy Act is a law that tells organisations how to look after information it holds.
A law is a rule made by the Government that everybody must follow.
The Privacy Act tells organisations how information must be:
The work the Privacy Commissioner does is guided by the Privacy Act.
You have a right to ask for your personal information under the Privacy Act.
The Privacy Act says the reasons why an organisation should:
You can contact the Privacy Commissioner if you have not been given the information you asked for.
Personal information is any information:
Here identify is where someone can tell the information is about you.
It may have things in it like your:
The Privacy Act tells organisations the rules to follow about personal information.
An organisation needs to tell you:
Here collecting is when an organisation:
You have the right know what information an organisation has about you.
You also have the right to ask an organisation to fix your information if there are mistakes in it.
Here mistakes means if information an organisation has about you is wrong.
You can ask for personal information an organisation has about you.
Organisations are places like:
The Privacy Act does not usually cover information about domestic situations.
Here domestic situation means information about your relationships with people like your:
You should make a complaint to the organisation first if you are unhappy with the information they give you.
You can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner if you are unhappy with how the organisation deals with your complaint.
You can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner if an organisation:
The Privacy Commissioner can give an access direction to an organisation.
An access direction is when the:
Click here to find out more about access directions
This website is not in Easy Read.
An organisation may not agree with what the Privacy Commissioner has said.
The organisation can make a complaint to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
The Human Rights Review Tribunal is a place like a court
The organisation must do this in 20 working days.
Working days are:
You can ask for an enforceable access order if an organisation has not:
An enforceable access order means the organisation has to give you the information the Privacy Commissioner told them to.
You can ask the Human Rights Review Tribunal for an enforceable access order.
The Privacy Commissioner may be able to support you to do this.
The Privacy Act rules do not cover information held by a court.
A court is a place where things about the law are worked out.
The court may decide not to give you the records you have asked for.
This can be because you were not part of the legal matters that took place in court.
If you are a survivor of abuse in care the courts will usually give you the records you have asked for.
People who have been through abuse in care are called survivors.
Here abuse is when somebody has been hurt by somebody when they were in the care or guardianship of others.
You can ask for court records from other organisations like Disability Support Services.
These places should follow the rules set out in the:
The Official Information Act tells government agencies what to do with the information they have.
They cannot give you the information if there is a reason like the court has said no.
Click here to find out more about asking for court records
You can contact the Privacy Commissioner by phone on:
0800 803 909
You can phone the Privacy Commission from:
If you find it hard to use the phone the New Zealand Relay service is for people who are:
You can find out more about the New Zealand Relay service at:
You can email the Privacy Commission at:
enquiries@privacy.org.nz
Click here to fill out a form on the Privacy Commissioner website
You can send a letter to the Privacy Commissioner by post at:
Office of the Privacy Commissioner
PO Box 10 094
Wellington 6143
Getting your records about when you were in care can make you feel lots of things.
It can be good to have someone to talk to about it.
You can talk to your:
Kōnae has information on where to get support you if you want to talk about how it feels to get your records.
Click here to find out what support you can get
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Click here to download the information on this webpage as a PDF.
More Easy Read information is available.
Click here to visit our Easy Read library webpage.
Click here to learn about who made this Easy Read.