AusNet Services is committed to handling your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). The purpose of this statement is to notify you of certain matters that we must tell you about before, at the time, or as soon as practicable after, we collect personal information about you. This statement applies specifically to the Gippsland Renewable Energy Zone™ project (G-REZ™ or the Project).

When you interact with the Project, for example by sending us an email, registering for Project updates or attending a community consultation event, you may disclose, or be asked to disclose, personal information about yourself. This may include your name, residential and/or postal address, telephone number(s) and email address.

We may collect and store the personal information you give us for the primary purpose of enabling us to deliver the Project. We may use your personal information for purposes relating to the Project, including:

• registering you to receive Project updates;
• sending you information that explains how the Project may affect your land holdings (including any rights or obligations you have as an affected landholder);
• inviting you to participate in community consultation events;
• registering your attendance at a meeting;
• scheduling a site visit; or
• recording and/or responding to questions you ask us about the Project.

We may also use or disclose your personal information for a secondary purpose that is permitted under the Privacy Act 1988.

Sometimes we hold public events like a community consultation or meeting. From time to time, we may decide to record the event. This may be an audio-only recording or an audio visual recording. If we intend to record a community consultation or meeting, we will give you explicit, prior notice of this.

You are not required to disclose your personal information to us. You also have the right to deal with us anonymously or using a pseudonym. However, if we cannot collect your personal information or verify your identity, there may be circumstances where it is impracticable for us to fully involve you in the Project or respond to your communication.

In some cases, your personal information may have been provided to us by another individual in the community on the basis that you may be interested in or affected by the Project. We will take reasonable steps to notify you that we have collected personal information about you and provide you with the information contained in this Collection Statement.

Your use of the Project website (www.grez.com.au) is governed by the Terms of Use which includes the Cookie Policy. The Terms of Use are available here. Any personal information collected about you from the site is subject to the Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy (including this Collection Statement).

We may also collect documents or other information about you from publicly available sources and records where the information is relevant to the Project. This may include details of your land holdings held by the Victorian Land Registry Services. We may conduct studies or surveys of your land holdings, including LiDAR and aerial imagery data or other surveys. Information about your land holdings, and the studies or surveys of your land, are not personal information and are therefore not subject to the Privacy Act 1988.

From time to time, we may disclose your personal information to consultants we engage to help us deliver the Project. This may include consultants who are experts in running community engagement processes, environmental or cultural heritage consultants, land valuers or engineering consultants. We may disclose your personal information to enable our consultants to:

• understand how the Project affects your land;
• contact you to arrange meetings or site inspections;
• conduct an inspection of or a survey on your property; or
• provide you with information about the Project.

Each consultant we engage on this Project is required to manage any personal information we disclose to them in accordance with the same privacy laws that we must comply with.

If a survey of your property reveals there are artefacts of cultural significance on land you own or occupy, we or our cultural heritage consultant may need to disclose your property address and contact information about you (such as your name, phone number and/or email address) to First Peoples – State Relations for the purposes of recording the artefacts on a register.

It is unlikely that personal information collected as part of the Project will be disclosed to parties located overseas.

The Privacy Act 1988 gives you the right to request access to your personal information, and to request a correction to the personal information we hold about you. To request access or correction, please use the Request for Access to Personal Information form or the Request Correction of Personal Information form available on the Project website. All requests for access or correction should be made using the relevant form.

If we hold personal information about you, we may charge you a fee to provide you with access. This is an administrative charge that contributes to the cost of searching for, collating and preparing the information relevant to your request. If a fee is payable, we will advise you of this and the quantum of the fee before we begin processing your request.

More information about how we handle personal information is available in our Privacy Policy, which is available at www.ausnetservices.com.au/Misc-Pages/Privacy.

If you have questions regarding this Collection Statement or the way we handle your personal information, please contact us by calling the AusNet Customer Service Centre on 1300 360 795 (8am-5pm, Monday-Friday) or by writing to us at:

AusNet Services
Attention: Privacy Officer - G-REZ^TM
Melbourne City Mail Centre VIC 8001
privacy@ausnetservices.com.au

Last updated: 30 June 2022