Privacy Policy
The last update to this document was 16 December 2021.
Introduction
OMPS Pty Ltd ACN 160 259 174 (OMPS, we, us, our) is committed to complying with applicable privacy laws in relation to the personal information that we collect in the course of running our business.
OMPS Pty Ltd (in partnership with Alinta Energy) is developing the Oven Mountain Pumped Hydro Energy Storage project (the Project), a 600MW renewable energy development located on private land near the Macleay River between Armidale and Kempsey in New South Wales, Australia. Further information about the Project can be found on our website https://www.ompshydro.com/ (the Website).
Please take a moment to read our Privacy Policy as it explains how we manage personal information including our obligations and your rights in respect of our dealings with your personal information.
Where applicable privacy laws provide for exceptions or exemptions, we may rely on those exceptions or exemptions in our information handling practices.
This Privacy Policy (other than section 10) explains how we manage personal information about individuals other than employees. Section 10 explains the position of employees.
Key definitions
In this document:
"APPs" means the Australia Privacy Principles set out in the Privacy Act;
"personal information" has the meaning set out in the Privacy Act, and (in summary) means information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether true or otherwise;
"Privacy Act" means the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth); and
"sensitive information" has the meaning set out in the Privacy Act, and includes certain specific types of personal information such as health information, and information about a person's racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation or practices, criminal record, religious beliefs or affiliations, political opinions, membership of a political, professional or trade association, and biometric and genetic information.
How we collect your personal information
We collect and hold your personal information in a fair and lawful manner, and not in an intrusive way.
Some of the common ways in which we may receive personal information directly from you include:
when you sign up for our mailing lists or register for our community engagement events;
when you contact us to request information or to make business inquiries;
when you provide us with your feedback, concerns or complaints about the Project and our business activities;
when we conduct community / stakeholder consultation or market research;
when you participate in any of the consultation forums that we may establish;
when you enter into contracts with us for goods or services, and when we administer and perform our contracts with our service providers;
when you apply for a job vacancy with us;
from your correspondence that you send to us (whether in writing or electronically) or when you contact us via telephone, our Website, our social media pages or other by means;
when you upload content to or interact (in an identifiable manner) with our Website or our social media pages;
if you attend any of our premises, we may record certain contact details and health information (such as details of your COVID-19 vaccination status) so that we can comply with applicable laws, and we may also record your image and/or voice if we have surveillance systems operating at those premises; and
as otherwise required to manage our business.
Where it is reasonably practical to do so, we will collect your personal information directly from you. However, in certain cases we may collect personal information from publicly available sources and from third parties such as:
our suppliers, contractors, clients and business partners;
local community stakeholders that we consult with in relation to the Project; and
regulatory bodies and government departments that we are working with in the development of the Project.
If we collect personal information about you from a third party we will, where appropriate, request that the third party inform you that we are holding such information, how we will use and disclose it, and that you may contact us to gain access to and correct and update the information.
Types of personal information we collect
The types of personal information we collect about you depends on the circumstances in which the information is collected. Typically, the types of personal information we may collect can include (but is not limited to) your name and contact details (address, email address and phone numbers), together with any information that you choose to provide us about yourself.
If you are an individual contractor to us or apply for a job vacancy with us, we may also collect information relevant to your engagement with us including qualifications, length of engagement, resume, current and former employment details, pay rate and salary, bank details, feedback from supervisors, training records and logs of your usage of our equipment (e.g. phones, computers and vehicles).
If you access our Website, we may utilise cookies to collect additional information about your use of our Website and apps. Please see the section 9 below for further details.
If we communicate with you by email, we may use technology to identify you so that it will be in position to know when you have opened the email or clicked on a link in the email.
We only collect sensitive information about you with your consent, or otherwise in accordance with the Privacy Act. The main types of sensitive information we may collect include:
information about your Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) status, if you have identified yourself as an Indigenous Australian and your dealings with us involve matters that are relevant to your ATSI status (such as our consultation with you about indigenous cultural and heritage issues relating to the Project);
certain health information (such as information about your COVID-19 vaccination status) where it is necessary for us to manage our workplace health and safety program and/or comply with government directions and public health orders;
details of injuries (ie. health information) that may occur on our premises;
details of disabilities or allergies (i.e. health information) you notify us of for a particular purpose (e.g. so that we can accommodate any special requirements when you attend our premises); and
details of your membership of professional associations and affiliations with relevant industry bodies or organisations and/or other types of sensitive information, where this is relevant to our business dealings or employment relationship with you (including as part of our recruitment process when you apply for a job vacancy with us).
If you do provide sensitive information to us for any reason (for example, if you provide us with information about your ethnicity a disability you have), you consent to us collecting that information and to us using and disclosing that information for the purpose for which you disclosed it to us and as permitted by the Privacy Act and other relevant laws.
In addition to the types of personal information identified above, we may collect personal information as otherwise permitted or required by law.
Where you do not wish to provide us with your personal information, we may not be able to provide you with requested goods or services and/or certain functionality of our Websites.
Our purposes for handling your personal information
The purposes for which we use and disclose your personal information will depend on the circumstances in which we collect it. Whenever practical we endeavour to inform you why we are collecting your personal information, how we intend to use that information and to whom we intend to disclose it at the time we collect your personal information.
We may use or disclose your personal information:
for the purposes for which we collected it (and related purposes which would be reasonably expected by you);
for other purposes to which you have consented; and
as otherwise authorised or required by law.
The Project is currently in the early stages of development. As we investigate the site and progress with development activities, we will continue to meet with community stakeholders. At present, we primarily collect, use and disclose personal information where it is necessary for the planning, development and construction of the Project.
Some of the activities that may require us to collect and handle personal information include:
community engagement and stakeholder consultation, and administering any consultation forums that we may establish;
administering our mailing list and newsletter;
conducting studies and planning activities;
participating in regulatory approval processes; and
preparing publications and other publicity for the Project.
Other specific purposes for which we may collect, hold, use and disclose personal information include:
to verify your identity;
to contact you, including via electronic messaging such as SMS and email, by mail, by phone or in any other lawful manner;
to provide you with goods, services or information you have requested;
to obtain goods, services or information from you;
to consider you for a job (whether as an employee or contractor) or business relationship;
to operate, monitor, moderate, develop and improve our Website and social media pages;
to optimise and customise the user experience (including content and advertising) for users of our Website, social media pages and services;
to facilitate communications via our Website and our social media pages, including communications with us or with other users of those platforms via direct messaging and posting to forums;
to protect the security and integrity of the Website and our other websites and social media pages, and enforce our Website terms of use and Social Media Moderation Policy;
to contact you (directly or through our service providers and marketing research agencies) to obtain your feedback and to find out your level of satisfaction with our goods and services;
to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
to protect the security, health and safety of our premises, facilities, personnel and visitors; and
Who we disclose your personal information to
We may disclose your personal information to third parties in connection with the purposes described in section 3 of this Privacy Policy above.
Where you make inquiries or provide submissions, feedback or complaints to us, we may share details of your input with other stakeholders that are relevant to responding to your inquiry, submission or feedback or resolving your complaint. If you participate in our community engagement and consultation processes, these third parties may include the other community, business and regulatory / government stakeholders that are also participating in those processes.
If you subscribe to our mailing list your contact information will be collected and processed by our e-mail marketing service provider (currently Consultation Manager, whose privacy policy can be found here). Our e-mail marketing service provider uses these details to send you the newsletters and other materials you have requested, and to allow you to manage your subscriptions with us (for example if you wish to unsubscribe) and for the purposes set out in their privacy policy.
When you subscribe to one of our mailing lists, you may be asked to consent to our e-mail marketing service provider to conduct analytics on your engagement with our e-mails. This may include collecting statistical data that helps us to understand how many people have read / opened an e-mail that we have sent to our mailing list.
During this preliminary planning phase of the Project, the types of third parties to whom we commonly disclose personal information in the ordinary course of business include:
our suppliers, contractors and organisations that provide us with technical and support services or who manage some of our business functions;
our related entities (who may use and disclose the information in the same manner we can);
our accountants, insurers, lawyers, auditors and other professional advisers;
any third parties to whom you have directed or permitted us to disclose your personal information (e.g. referees); and
in the unlikely event that we or our assets may be acquired or considered for acquisition by a third party, that third party and its advisors.
As the Project progresses, we may appoint a third party to manage and operate the Project. If this happens, we will provide relevant records and information (which may include personal information that we have collected during the planning phase of the Project) to the third party operator, where this information is relevant and necessary for them to manage and operate the Project.
During this preliminary planning phase, we are developing the Project in partnership with Alinta Energy. If Alinta Energy is subsequently appointed to manage and operate the Project, any personal information that we provide to Alinta Energy will be subject to Alinta Energy's privacy policy (which is available here).
We may also disclose your personal information in accordance with any consent you give or where disclosure is authorised, compelled or permitted by law.
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.
Social media platforms
We use social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn to communicate with the public about our services and businesses. We may collect the information that you choose to share with us through these platforms, including photos, videos and comments and posts.
These social media platforms have their own privacy policies, and may handle your information for their own purposes. You can access the privacy policies for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on their websites.
If you choose to use these social media platforms to communicate with us or with other parents and guardians, please be mindful that certain pages within these platforms may be publically available. We encourage you to use the privacy settings available on each platform. If you would like to contact us directly, you can do so using the contact details in section 13.
Overseas disclosures of personal information
We are an Australian business, and the personal information that we collect will primarily relate to local community issues in the areas surrounding the Project.
In general, we do not regularly disclose personal information to overseas recipients in the ordinary course of business.
We may disclose personal information to overseas recipients on a case-by-case basis, where it is relevant to a particular activity - for example, where we are consulting stakeholders or business partners who are based outside of Australia.
Whenever we transfer your personal information outside of Australia, we will do so in accordance with the requirements of applicable privacy and data protection laws. We may disclose your personal information to overseas recipient without your consent where permitted by the Privacy Act (and, in such circumstances, we will comply with the applicable requirements of the Privacy Act in doing so).
Storage and protection of personal information
We will hold personal information as either secure physical records, electronically on our intranet system, in cloud storage, and in some cases, records on third party servers, which may be located overseas.
We use a range of security measures to protect the personal information we hold, including by implementing IT security tools to protect our electronic databases.
We will destroy or de-identify personal information once it is no longer needed for a valid purpose or required to be kept by law. We may need to retain records containing personal information to comply with record keeping obligations, and for other legitimate business purposes (such as quality assurance).
We may need to retain records containing personal information to comply with record keeping obligations, and for other legitimate business purposes (such as quality assurance).
Direct marketing
Like most businesses, marketing is important to our continued success. We therefore like to stay in touch with our stakeholders and customers to keep them informed about the Project. This may include general project updates, information about community information sessions that we are conducting, and information about commercial opportunities in connection with the Project. We may provide you with information about products, services and promotions either from us, or from third parties which may be of interest to you, where:
you have consented to us doing so; or
it is otherwise permitted by law.
You may opt out at any time if you no longer wish to receive direct marketing messages from us. You can make this request by using the unsubscribe function on marketing e-mails that you receive from us, or by contacting our Privacy Officer using the details in section 13 below.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file stored in your computer's memory or on your hard disk for a pre-defined period of time. We may use cookies to identify specific machines in order to collect aggregate information on how visitors are experiencing the Website. This information will help to better adapt the Website to suit personal requirements. While cookies allow a computer to be identified, they do not permit any reference to a specific individual. For information on cookie settings of your internet browser, please refer to your browser's manual.
We may use third party vendors to show our ads on sites on the Internet and serve these ads based on a user's prior visits to our Website and other internet activity. We may also use analytics data supplied by these vendors to inform and optimise our ad campaigns based on your prior visits to our Website.
Employees
We collect information in relation to employees as part of their application and during the course of their employment, either from them or in some cases from third parties such as recruitment agencies, referees, government bodies (e.g. police checks, if required) and academic and professional bodies (e.g. to validate details and currency of qualifications). Such information may include contact details, qualifications, resume, current and former employment details, pay rate and salary, bank details, feedback from supervisors, training records and logs of your usage of our equipment (e.g. phones, computers and vehicles).
Under the Privacy Act, personal information about a current or former employee may be held, used or disclosed in any way that is directly connected to the employment relationship. We handle employee information in accordance with legal requirements and our applicable policies in force from time to time.
Accessing and correcting your personal information
You may contact our Privacy Officer (see section 13) to request access to the personal information that we hold about you and/or to make corrections to that information, at any time.
On the rare occasions when we refuse access (which we will only do in accordance with applicable laws), we will provide you with a written notice stating our reasons for refusing access. We may seek to recover from you reasonable costs incurred for providing you with access to the personal information we hold about you.
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 for refusing.
We will respond to all requests for access to or correction of personal information within a reasonable time.
Resolving personal information concerns
If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal information, including if you believe we have breached the APPs, please contact our Privacy Officer (see section 13).
When contacting us please provide as much detail as possible in relation to your question, concern or complaint.
We take all complaints seriously, and will respond to your complaint in accordance with any applicable timeframes imposed by law and otherwise within a reasonable period. We request that you cooperate with us during this process and provide us with any relevant information that we may need.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your complaint, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001
Telephone: 1300 363 992
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Contact details of Privacy Officer
The contact details for our Privacy Officer are as follows:
Postal address: PO Box 1071, North Sydney, NSW, 2059
Telephone: 1800 518 194
Email info@ompshydro.com
Links
Our Website may contain links to other websites operated by third parties. We make no representations or warranties in relation to privacy practices of any third party website and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of any third party website. Third party websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices and procedures.
Changes
We reserve the right to change the terms of this Privacy Policy from time to time, without notice to you. An up-to-date copy of our Privacy Policy is available on our Website.