Privacy Reform – Consultation on Exposure Draft legislation
The Australian Government has released a Consultation Paper and Exposure Draft legislation to modernise and strengthen Australia’s privacy laws for the digital age. ITS Australia sincerely appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Australian Government’s consultation on the proposed Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026 and related reforms.
ITS Australia supports privacy reforms that give Australians confidence that connected transport services will handle their information responsibly. Privacy and innovation are not competing objectives. Well-designed privacy protections are a precondition for community trust, adoption and the safe scaling of connected vehicles and cooperative intelligent transport systems.
The Government should retain a technology-neutral, risk-based framework; support privacy-by-design practices; and issue practical, transport-specific guidance that enables legitimate, proportionate and secure use of data for road safety, freight productivity, network efficiency, infrastructure management and research.
A mature privacy framework should prevent unjustified surveillance, profiling and misuse of personal information while enabling the carefully governed data sharing needed to reduce crashes, protect vulnerable road users and road workers, improve travel reliability, and unlock the productivity benefits of a connected transport system. ITS Australia wants to highlight the need for connected transport to be recognised as a distinct public-interest application of data-enabled technology and would appreciate the opportunity for practical sector-specific guidance to be developed in collaboration with the OAIC.