Power and Water Corporation (ABN 15 947 352 360) (“Power and Water”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to the protection of your personal information. We handle all personal information in accordance with the relevant Commonwealth and Northern Territory privacy laws, including the Information Act 2002 (NT) and Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Acts) .
This Privacy Policy sets out how and why we collect, store, use and disclose personal information, and your rights to access and correct the personal information that we hold about you. In this Privacy Policy, personal information is considered any information that discloses an individual’s identity or from which a person’s identity is reasonably ascertainable. Power and Water is committed to providing fair and responsible handling of personal information. Information that you provide to us will always be treated in a way that is in accordance with our regulatory requirements.
From time to time we may need to amend this Privacy Policy. We will make sure that the policy uploaded onto our website is the most up to date Privacy Policy so that you are always be aware of how your personal information is handled.
In this Privacy Policy “include”, "including", “for example” and similar words are not words of limitation.
Collection of your personal information
We collect and hold personal information that is necessary for the purposes of our business functions and activities, and as required or permitted by law. Our business functions and activities include the provision of water, sewerage, and power services and products; the processing of payments for such services and/or products; undertaking planned water, sewerage, and power works; and issuing water, sewerage, and power maintenance notifications.
The personal information we collect and hold may include your name, date of birth, postal address, email address, telephone number, address of premises at which our services and/or products are provided, payment arrangements, (where payment is made electronically), credit history, concession or discount entitlements and information about the services and/or products provided to you (such as electricity consumption and payment history). In some instances, credit card details may be held until the completion of the transaction. Once the payment has been processed, any credit card information is immediately destroyed.
In some circumstances we may need to collect sensitive information about you in order to provide specific services and/or products to you. The type of sensitive information we may collect includes any relevant special health needs, for example if life support equipment is used at the address we supply services and/or products. Sensitive information is only collected, held, used and disclosed with your consent or as otherwise required or permitted by law, which may include notifying your electricity retailer of life support requirements.
Where it is reasonable and practicable to do so, we will collect your personal information from you directly, for example, we will collect personal information from you by way of written forms, other correspondence (including facsimiles, letters and emails including when you contact us), by telephone, in person, by our representatives and via our website and social media platforms. We may also collect personal information about you from third parties or outside sources, including from additional account holders on your account, your authorised representative/s, from our agents or third parties with whom we have business relationships, from credit reporting bodies and other credit providers and from publicly available sources of information.
From time to time we may require you to provide us with personal information about other individuals (for example about additional account holders on your account or your authorised representatives). When you provide us with such personal information, we assume you will have made the individual aware that you are providing their personal information to us and that you have made them aware of this Privacy Policy.
Although we will enable you to interact anonymously or to use a pseudonym with us whenever possible and practicable to do so, if you do not provide all of the personal information we require, we may be unable to provide you with the services and/or products you are seeking as usually we need to use your personal information to provide specific services and/or products to you.
Holding personal information
We hold personal information in both physical and electronic records. In some cases, Power and Water will use and contract the use of cloud computing services to store and manage data that it collects which may include your personal information. Computer servers used for cloud computing purposes may be in the Northern Territory but may also be outside of the Northern Territory.
Power and Water takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of your personal information where it is stored and managed by Power and Water. Where your personal information is transferred to one of Power and Water’s contracted service providers (including those located outside of the Northern Territory or Australia) the contracted service providers are ordinarily contractually bound to only use your personal information in connection with the services they provide to Power and Water and to handle your personal information in a confidential and secure manner in accordance with the Acts.
Use and disclosure of personal information
Personal information is only used and disclosed by Power and Water in connection with the provision of water, sewerage and power services and/or products; the processing of payments for such services and/or products; undertaking any planned water, sewerage or power works; and issuing any water, sewerage or power maintenance notifications. To provide the services and/or products that you require, Power and Water assumes that you consent for us to use and disclose your personal information for purposes such as:
- informing you of new services, products and initiatives;
- informing you of planned works and outage notifications;
- development of new services, products and initiatives;
- processing payments and refunds;
- providing you with the services and/or products you have requested;
- to advise you of community service information and special offers;
- to allow us to communicate with you effectively.
We may disclose your personal information to third parties in connection with services and/or products we provide to you. This may include additional account holders or your authorised representative/s, energy retailers, financial institutions (for payment processing), credit reporting bodies and other credit providers, government and regulatory authorities (where required or authorised by law), or to our service providers such as information technology suppliers, meter reading and maintenance contractors, debt collection agencies, mailing houses, call centre operators, advisers and other service contractors associated with operating and improving Power and Water's business. We may also disclose personal information to our related entities where necessary for the functions and activities of our or their business.
Where required or authorised by law, personal information may be used or disclosed by us to assist government or law enforcement agencies to identify possible illegal activities.
Apart from the above disclosures, we will otherwise only use and disclose personal information with your consent unless such uses and disclosures are required or permitted by law.
If you do not permit Power and Water to use your personal information for any or all of these services, contact us on customerservice@powerwater.com.au or 1800 245 092.
When you visit our website and mobile application (app)
To improve your experience on Power and Water’s website, we may use ‘cookies’. A cookie is a small text file that allows us to collect information about your visit. The information collected includes the type of browser, device and platform you use as well as your traffic patterns through our website and app, including what you did while on our website or app. No personal information is stored within cookies. If you prefer not to receive these cookies, you can adjust your browser settings. However, if you disable cookies, you may not be able to use the full functionality of our website or app.
The information collected through cookies is only collected for statistical and website/app improvement purposes. Power and Water will not make any attempt to identify users or their browsing activities.
If you access another party’s website via the Power and Water website, including via any links to other websites contained on our website, thet other party will deal with your personal information in accordance with their own privacy policy. Power and Water is not responsible for the privacy practices, or the use and protection, of your personal information on those websites.
Information disclosed outside the Northern Territory and overseas
Power and Water may transfer your personal information to third parties outside of the Northern Territory and/or Australia for the purposes of our business functions and activities (including when providing you with services and/or products) or where required or authorised by law.
For the protection of your personal information, where we transfer your personal information to third parties outside of the Northern Territory and/or Australia we take reasonable steps to ensure that these third parties will not hold, use or disclose your personal information in a manner that is inconsistent with, or in breach of the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) and Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Acts.
Security information
Power and Water takes reasonable steps to protect the personal information that we hold about you from intentional and unintentional interference, loss, misuse, or unauthorised access, disclosure or modification. We safeguard your information through written privacy policies and physical, electronic and procedural protection. We destroy or permanently de-identify information we collect, use or disclose when it is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected and when permitted or authorised by law.
Although care is taken to protect your information you provide to us via electronic means, including our website and mobile apps, it should be noted that the internet is not a secure environment and the security of that information during transmission cannot be guaranteed.
How can you access your information?
You are able to request access to or the correction of the personal information held about you by contacting Power and Water on customerservice@powerwater.com.au or 1800 245 092. We may refuse your request to access or correct your personal information where required or authorised by law to do so.
If you request access to the personal information we hold about you, we required you to:
- apply in writing
- provide sufficient information to identify yourself, which may include your Power and Water customer identification number (from your bill) and or your driver's licence details;
- provide sufficient details to identify the information being requested
- specify an address to which correspondence regarding the request may be sent.
We may also charge a fee for providing access (limited to the amount of our reasonable expenses incurred in responding to your request, including photocopying and administrative expenses). We will not charge a fee for you to lodge a request for access. We will endeavour to respond to your request within 30 days.
We may provide you with access to your personal information either in hard copy or by allowing you to view onsite if required.
If any of your details change or if you think any personal information we have collected or hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, you can contact Power and Water on customerservice@powerwater.com.au or 1800 245 092 and we will take reasonable steps to correct the information so that it is accurate, complete and up to date.
How to make a complaint
If you believe Power and Water has breached your privacy or you have a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, you can contact our Privacy Officer, in writing using the contact details below. We will investigate your complaint and provide you with a response.
| informationofficer@powerwater.com.au | |
| Post |
Privacy officer Power and Water GPO Box 3596 Darwin NT 0801 |
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint directly with the Northern Territory Information Commissioner .
Contact us for further information
If you have any queries regarding how we handle your personal information or if you would like to opt out of receiving communications promoting our services and products, you can contact us via any of these channels:
| Online | Contact us |
| customerservice@powerwater.com.au | |
| Post |
Customer Assurance team Power and Water GPO Box 3596 Darwin NT 0801 |
| Phone | 1800 245 092 |
