Your privacy and body corporate disputes

When you access dispute resolution services from us—the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management (BCCM office)—you give us information and documents to support your case.

We cannot keep what each party gives us private or confidential. This includes whatever you provide in:

• your conciliation or adjudication application
• submissions
• replies to submissions.

We also can’t remove anything, even if you object to it. This includes if you believe it:

• damages your reputation (i.e. is defamatory)
• has been obtained in an improper way.

All parties in a dispute must be able to access material an adjudicator considers to make a decision. The adjudicator may talk about this material in their decision, which we will publish online.

Personal information

We collect and disclose your personal information when you access our dispute resolution services.

Queensland Government agencies must follow the Information Privacy Act 2009 (IP Act). Under the IP Act, we must collect and handle your personal information according to certain rules or ‘privacy principles’. This is your right.

An agency which holds someone’s personal information must not disclose it—unless the IP Act allows them to.

BCCM office and the IP Act

The Office of the Information Commissioner recognises:

• us as a ‘quasi-judicial entity’ when we provide adjudication (and sometimes conciliation)
• an adjudicator as a quasi-judicial officer connected with us.

A quasi-judicial entity isn’t a court, but it runs like one. For example, it:

• may hold hearings in public
• has officers (e.g. adjudicators) who make legally binding decisions
• must give reasons for these decisions.

The privacy principles in the IP Act do not apply to someone who is performing a function of a quasi-judicial entity. In our case, this function is adjudication (or conciliation).

This means we don’t need to follow the IP Act when we manage personal information that’s part of an adjudication or conciliation application.

When the privacy principles apply

The privacy principles in the IP Act do apply when we perform a task that is not a quasi-judicial function. For example, if you contact us with a question.

Also, we can disclose your personal information if it is authorised or required under a law. For example, if we must give personal information to certain people under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997, the IP Act allows us to do so.