1.1 Optometry Australia (ABN 17 004 622 431) (Optometry Australia, we, us or our) is a federated not-for-profit organisation and the national peak professional body for optometrists in Australia.
1.2 We operate for the benefit of optometrists and optometry students who are members of one of our following state divisions (Members):
(a) Optometry New South Wales/Australian Capital Territory (ABN 78 000 006 093)
(b) Optometry Queensland/Northern Territory (ABN 54 009 657 265);
(c) Optometry Tasmania (ABN 18 332 330 199);
(d) Optometry Victoria/South Australia (ABN 27 451 280 538);
(e) Optometry Western Australia (ABN 42 736 864 919),
(each a State Division).
1.3 We provide the following services to Members:
(a) Represent the interests of Members to third parties to advance the profession of optometry nationally and improve the provision of eye care to the Australian community;
(b) Develop, coordinate and implement professional development programs, to communicate, provide and inform Members of services that are provided by us;
(c) Support the professional needs of Members;
(d) Publish an online directory of Australian optometrists for distribution to the Australian general public. Your Personal Information is only included in this directory if you opt-in.
(e) Create and publish information about the importance of optometry and eye health for the general public;
(f) Investigate and resolve Member complaints and enquiries
(g) Monitor and plan for the advancement of the provision of eye care in Australia, including workforce studies; and
(h) Assist Members to comply with their professional and legislative obligations.
(the Services)
2.1 Optometry Australia values your privacy and works hard to protect the information provided to us.
2.2 This Privacy Policy explains how we manage your Personal Information in accordance with the Privacy Act (1988)Cth) (Privacy Act) including our obligations and your rights in respect of our dealings with your Personal Information.
2.3 Please take a moment to read this Privacy Policy as it describes what happens to the Personal Information that you provide to us. .
2.4 In this Privacy Policy:
‘Personal Information’ is information or an opinion about an individual, whether true or not, which identifies them or from which their identity is reasonably identifiable.
‘Website’ means optometry.org.au.
‘You’ and ‘your’ refers to persons (including Members and non-members) who provide us with Personal Information in their interactions with us.
3.1 We collect and hold Personal Information in a lawful and fair manner.
3.2 Where it is reasonably practical to do so, we will collect your Personal Information directly from you when:
(a) You sign up to become a Member of a State Division.
(b) You provide Personal Information directly to a representative at:
(i) Optometry Australia; and/or
(ii) one of the State Divisions;
(c) You make an inquiry through the Website;
(d) You contact us or one of our State Divisions (whether in writing or electronically), including by an online form through the Website, email, text message or post;
(e) You sign-up to receive newsletters and industry updates via our ‘Good vision for life’ website (https://goodvisionforlife.com.au/); and
(f) otherwise as required to provide the Services.
3.3 We may also collect Personal Information through some of the following means:
(a) from our State Divisions;
(b) from publicly available sources, including the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Authority Register of Practitioners (limited to the collection of Personal Information about optometrists that is made publicly available by AHPRA); and
(c) from other third parties such as suppliers, recruitment agencies, contractors and business partners.
3.4 If we collect Personal Information about you from a third party we will, where appropriate, request the third party inform you that we are holding your information, how we will use and disclose it, and that you may contact us to gain access to and correct and update the information.
4.1 The amount and types of Personal Information we collect about you will depend on the interactions that we have with you and the kinds of Services that you request from us. The kinds of Personal Information that OA typically collects includes (but may not be limited to):
(a) name, contact address (such as home, practice, work, or postal address), phone number, email address, date of birth;
(b) State Division to which a Member belongs;
(c) information about a Member’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) including CPD activities, points and any CPD training completed;
(d) gender;
(e) languages spoken;
(f) qualifications including Medical Endorsements (such as Scheduled Medicines Endorsement) (if applicable);
(g) Memberships/fellowships of optometric organisations;
(h) a Member’s practice position; and
(i) other information that is deemed relevant to the practice of optometry.
4.2 We may also collect other categories of Personal Information provided by you in the ‘My CPD Portfolio’ tool that we provide which is available for Members via our Website.
4.3 You may elect to provide, or not provide, any of the above information. However, where a Member or non-Member refuses to provide certain information, we may be unable provide that individual with certain Services.
4.4 We do not normally collect sensitive information, such as health information and will not collect sensitive information about you unless you consent to the collection of the information and the information is reasonably necessary for one or more of our functions or activities.
5.1 We may use your to:
(a) establish, administer and manage your membership, including providing member benefits, processing applications, issuing insurance policies, and advising on and managing incidents and claims;
(b) communicate with you about your membership and any updates or changes to your insurance cover or entitlements, including practice alerts and information on events and initiatives relevant to your profession or membership;
(c) provide customer service including managing and responding to enquiries, requests and complaints;
(d) provide you with information about our products and Services including sending you marketing or promotional information about our products and Services, and those offered by our partners where you have consented to receiving this information or where we reasonably consider they may be of interest;
(e) conduct market, consumer and other relevant research and data analysis to enhance our products and Services and better understand our users and their preferences, noting that such research is undertaken on an aggregated and de-identified basis so that it no longer constitutes Personal Information;
(f) to enforce our rights arising from contracts;
(g) to consider an application for employment (if applicable);
(h) to otherwise manage our business;
(i) for any purpose reasonably related to the purpose for which we have collected it; and
(j) otherwise with the consent from the individual to whom the information relates, or their legal guardian (if applicable).
5.2 We do not share, sell or otherwise disclose your Personal Information for purposes other than as outlined in this Privacy Policy.
5.3 Access to your Personal Information to employees and contractors engaged by Optometry Australia will be restricted to those persons at Optometry Australia who require access in order to deliver the products and Services that we provide.
5.4 We will disclose Personal Information for the following purposes:
(a) To publish an online directory of Australian optometrists that are Members of Optometry Australia. This directory enables consumers with a searchable database to obtain contact and practice information about optometrists in Australia.
(Note: Members will be required to opt-in to their Personal Information being published in the online directory. The information published in the online directory includes Member name, Practice name, Practice address, Practice phone number and language(s) spoken. Members may opt out at any time from having their Personal Information published in the directory by notifying us in writing or by editing their profile on the Website.
(b) To provide or arrange professional indemnity insurance, public liability insurance and HR legal assistance for Members;
(c) To conduct studies with respect to the profession, to support our advocacy on behalf of members, such as workforce studies;
(d) To provide electronic communications and marketing to you;
(e) To fulfil the purpose or which you have provided your Personal Information to us;
(f) To an entity we merge with, acquire or that buys us, or in the event of change in structure of our company of any form;
(g) To comply with our legal obligations;
(h) To enforce our rights, including to enforce agreements that we have with you; and
(i) To otherwise provide the Services.
5.5 We may disclose your Personal Information to our State Divisions.
5.6 We may also disclose information to other third parties, such as organisations that provide us with technical, legal, insurance and support services, mailing houses, event organisers, marketing and communications agencies or other professional advisors, where we are permitted to do so by the Privacy Act. If we disclose information to a third party, we generally require that the third party protect your information to the same extent that we do.
5.7 We will not otherwise use or disclose your Personal Information for any other purpose unless you have consented to that use or disclosure. We will provide you with more specific information in our privacy collection notices that are provided to you at the point of collection of your Personal Information.
6.1 All Personal Information held by us is hosted on servers located in Australia.
6.2 We may transfer de-identified aggregate data to partner international organisations including the World Council of Optometry.
6.3 If you are located overseas, our third party service providers may be required to disclose your data to service providers in the country that you are located in order to provide those electronic communication services to you.
6.4 From time to time we may engage an overseas recipient to provide services to us that may require the disclosure of your Personal Information overseas. Where this occurs, this may involve disclosing your Personal Information to a foreign country including, but not limited to, the United States of America (for cloud-based storage solutions and electronic communication services) and to a foreign country including, but is not limited to, the United Kingdom and the United States of America for reinsurance, underwriting and claims management purposes.
6.5 Where Personal Information is disclosed to recipients located outside of Australia, we use all reasonable endeavours to safeguard your Personal Information.
7.1 We will hold Personal Information as either secure physical records, electronically on our intranet system, in cloud storage, and in some cases, on third party servers, which are located in Australia.
7.2 We maintain appropriate physical, procedural and technical security for our offices and information storage facilities so as to prevent any loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, or modification of Personal Information. This also applies to disposal of Personal Information.
7.3 Physical, electronic and managerial procedures have been employed to safeguard the security and integrity of your Personal Information. These steps include shredding physical documents that are no longer required, implementing two-factor authentication, firewalls, antivirus software, data encryption and password-protected systems, using third-party payment gateways for processing payments, and restricting access to Personal Information to authorised personnel only.
7.4 We will destroy or permanently de-identify Personal Information once it is no longer needed for a valid purpose or required to be kept by law.
7.5 Whilst we take reasonable steps to maintain the security of your Personal Information transmitted via the internet, unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure. Although we strive to protect such information, we do not warrant the security of any information transmitted over the internet and you do so at your own risk.
8.1 Our Website may use pixels and also cookies to automatically record information about how the Website is accessed and used (Website Analytics Information).
8.2 We may use Website Analytics Information from time to time to obtain information and date in relation to how visitors are experiencing the Website. This information will help to better adapt the Website to suit personal requirements. You are not identifiable from Website Analytics Information.
8.3 You can adjust the settings in your browser to control how your browser deals with cookies. However, in doing so, you may affect the functionality of our Website and be unable to access certain pages or content from our Website.
8.4 We also use Google analytics to monitor the visitors to our Website. Based on your interactions with our Website, Google and third party websites may elect to show you content and advertising that directs back to our Website. You can opt out of the collection of your information via Google Analytics by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-Out browser add on.
9.1 You are entitled to request access to, correction of, or deletion of Personal Information that we hold about you. To do so, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details at section 12.1 of this Privacy Policy.
9.2 If you request access to, correction of, deletion or deidentification of your Personal Information, we will review that request and provide a response within a reasonable time.
9.3 On the rare occasions when we refuse access to your Personal Information, we will provide you with a written notice stating our reasons for doing so. We may seek to recover from you reasonable costs incurred for providing you with access to Personal Information held by us.
9.4 We are not obliged to correct any of your Personal Information if we do not agree that it requires correction and may refuse to do so. If we refuse a correction request, we will provide you with a written notice stating our reasons.
9.5 We encourage Members to regularly review their profile on the Member portal, accessed via the Website and make adjustments directly to your membership record.
9.6 Deleting or de-identifying certain types of Personal Information may mean you are no longer eligible to receive a particular Service we offer. If so, we will inform you of the consequences in writing and seek your confirmation before proceeding. Once confirmation is received from you in writing, we will comply with the request.
9.7 In some circumstances we may be required by law to retain some of your Personal Information, including for record keeping purposes.
We will not adopt, use or disclose any identifier assigned to a Member by a government agency, except where required by law.
11.1 We will notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in circumstances where there has been an eligible data breach concerning your Personal Information as required by the Privacy Act. This is when:
(a) we suspect that a data breach relating to your Personal Information has occurred; and
(b) there is real risk of serious harm to you as a result of the breach; and
(c) we cannot take remedial steps to reduce the risk of serious harm.
12.1 If you have any requests, complaints or questions about this Privacy Policy, or how we handle your Personal Information, or if you wish to access the Personal Information we hold about you, please contact our Privacy Officer:
The Privacy Officer: Luke Arundel
Post:
Optometry Australia
Attention: National Privacy Officer
28 Drummond Street
Carlton Vic 3053
Australia
Telephone: (03) 9668 8500
Email: national@optometry.org.au
Please mark the correspondence to the attention of: National Privacy Officer
12.2 We take all complaints seriously, and will respond to your complaint within 14 days.
12.3 If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your complaint, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner using the following details:
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001
Telephone: 1300 363 992
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
13.1 We reserve the right to change the terms of this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect our current data collection and disclosure practices, with or without notice to you.
13.2 The most recent version of this Privacy Policy is available on our Website and we encourage you to visit our Website regularly to keep up to date with any changes to this Privacy Policy.
13.3 This Privacy Policy was last updated in October 2025.
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In the spirit of reconciliation Optometry Australia acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.