BERT Privacy Policy Statement

BERT respects the privacy of individuals.

Protecting personal information has always been important to us, but now the law requires that personal information is protected. Changes to the Commonwealth Privacy Act mean that we must now handle personal information in accordance with National Privacy Principles.

This document is a summary of BERT's policy on the management of personal information about members.

The personal information collected by BERT is generally the member's name and address and other contact details, date of birth, occupation, Tax File Number (if the member has chosen to quote it) and union membership (if the member has chosen to supply union membership details). BERT normally collects this information, but may also collect information from a member's employer. This information is needed to process each member's claims and administer their account.

When assessing a member's eligibility for claims, additional information may be collected from current and previous employers. In addition, if there is any dispute about a member's entitlement, BERT may disclose information about the member to other advisers (for example, legal advisers).

Information about members is normally only disclosed to BERT's service providers. However limited information about members is disclosed to other organisations in the circumstances described below.

A significant number of members of BERT are also members of BUSS(Q) and CIPQ. BERT conducts a database matching process with CIPQ & BUSS(Q) to ensure each organisation has the most up to date address for people who are members of more than one of them. Where the database search shows a different address for the same person, each organisation adopts the most recent address so that BERT can continue to communicate with you to ensure your records are kept up to date.

BERT believes it is important that contributions are paid regularly, and any late payments are identified so steps can be taken to recover late contributions. As part of the process of monitoring contributions, BERT from time to time, supplies Fund Stakeholders with information about the names of members employed by particular employers who are working on sites where an award, industrial agreement or enterprise bargain agreement is in place as well as the amount of contributions that have been made for them over a period of time.

Further information about the nature of personal information that we hold and how it is handled may be obtained from the funds Privacy Officer, Bill Wallace on 1300 261 114.

Further information about the Privacy Act can be obtained from the Federal Privacy Commissioner's hotline on 1300 363 992.