AFA may, from time to time, review and update its Privacy Policy, including to consider new laws, regulations, practices and technology. All personal information held by AFA will be governed by its most recent Privacy Policy (including this Privacy Statement). It will post on its website that changes have been made to the Privacy Policy and publish on the website the effective date when the Privacy Policy is updated.From time to time it may use the personal information already collected to identify new services and/or products it believes may be of interest to you or use personal information in new ways. It will generally only do this where it is permitted to do so under the relevant privacy laws.

To the extent applicable, AFA will comply with the relevant Acts covering the legitimate use of an individual’s personal information. Noting Air Force Association Ltd is a company registered in the State of Victoria, the relevant Acts are:

• Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (VIC)
• Freedom of Information Act 1982 (VIC)
• Public Records Act 1973 (VIC)
• Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)

AFA takes a risk management approach to collecting, storing and using your personal information and data. It knows the risks and take steps to mitigate them as the most important element of best practice charity governance. The AFA Ltd Board of Directors is highly aware of and sensitive to its legal responsibility in managing personal information and data. Where a data breach occurs, and meets relevant regulators’ specified harm thresholds, AFA follows mandatory data breach notification procedures of the relevant regulator.

Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:

• whether the information or opinion is true or not, and
• whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.

Personal information includes:

• name, including the name of an authorised parent, guardian, carer or other representative who you have nominated as your representative;
• date of birth and gender;
• the name, address and contact details of your organisation or business (if applicable);

• contact information (such as a home address, email address and phone number);
• credit/debit card and bank account information;
• signatures;
• employment details
• details of products or services purchased or received from AFA and RAAFANSW Publications, being Air Force Association badges, ties, polo shirts, caps, Wingsmagazine, and wellbeing support and/or compensation advocacy;
• details of service and product preferences;
• details of the products or services purchased, received or in which individuals have participated (such as the name and date of the Air Force 2021 Commemoration or subscription to Wings; and
• other information about your history with, or relationship to the Royal Australian Air Force.

AFA may collect personal information from people who are connected to its operations and activities – including:

• Patron
• Board of Directors
• employees
• volunteers
• donors
• supporters
• customers
• clients
• recipients of support services
• participants in advocacy campaigns
• suppliers and service providers

It also collects information about you if you are a user of our website.

AFA may collect your personal information for a number of purposes, including:

• Direct communication – about, products, services, campaigns, causes and events, including commemorative events;
• Membership operations – to administer corporate membership (including to process applications, provide receipts if required, provide notice of and receive monies for the conduct of events) and to communicate with you in relation to any of these and things;
• Dealings with suppliers – to administer its dealings and potential dealings with suppliers of its products and services;
• Support services – to provide you with information, its products and support services, and to evaluate and report on these products or services;
• Research – to conduct surveys such as membership needs survey, evaluation of Wings,
• Employment – to process any job application submitted by you, conduct employment activities with staff and for other employment-related purposes;
• Volunteering and other support – to enable you to assist AFA with volunteering, advocacy and other activities where AFA seeks the community’s assistance; and
• Other issues – communicating with you in relation to our operations, activities and objectives, to verify your identity, to improve and evaluate its operations and to comply with relevant laws.

In some cases, AFA may collect your personal information as an agent for Air Force or an Air Force Association state and territory division or any other organisation where it has a lead role in a commemorative activity or event. In those circumstances, your personal information will be collected, used and disclosed by both AFA and those organisations in accordance with their separate privacy policies.

AFA will provide you with a collection notice which explains the primary purpose for which we are collecting your personal information.

Unless required or authorised by law to use or disclose your personal information, AFA will not use or disclose personal information that was provided for a purpose for other purposes unless:

• you have consented to the use or disclosure of the information for that other purpose; or
• the purpose for which the information is used or disclosed is directly related to the purpose for which the personal information was obtained. If you would like to change any consents you previously provided to AFA, or you have any questions about how its uses and discloses your personal information, please contact AFA at admin@raafa.org.au.

AFA uses ‘cookies’ to collect information about which web pages you view and how you reach them, what you do when you visit a page, the length of time you remain on the page, and how it performs in providing content to you.

A ‘cookie’ does not identify individuals personally, but it does identify computers. You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a ‘cookie’, and this will provide you with an opportunity to either accept or reject it in each instance. If you disable the use of cookies on your browser or remove or reject specific cookies from our website or linked sites, then you may not be able to gain access to all the content and facilities in those websites.

AFA may gather your Internet Protocol (IP) address as part of its business activities and to assist with any operational difficulties or support issues with its services. This information does not identify you personally.

AFA may preserve the content of any email or other electronic message or form that it receives. Any personal information contained in those messages will only be used or disclosed in accordance with this Air Force Association Privacy Statement. The message content may be monitored by our service providers or AFA or its Communications and Media Manager for purposes including trouble shooting, compliance, auditing and maintenance, or where email abuse is suspected, which means that your personal information may be disclosed to third party service providers.

The AFA website and its social media channels may, from time to time, contain links to the websites and social media sites/profiles of other organisations or individuals which may be of interest to you. These third-party websites or profiles themselves may facilitate collection of information by those third parties, through your interaction with the websites or profiles and sometimes even if you do not interact directly with them. AFA is not responsible for the technical operation of these websites or profiles or the collection and use practices of the relevant third parties. Linked websites and social media sites/profiles are responsible for their own privacy practices and you should check those websites and social media sites/profiles for their respective privacy policies to understand their privacy practices and options they may make available to you in relation to their collection of your personal information.

AFA uses a range of social media accounts to inform, engage, communicate with and learn from stakeholders and the worldwide Air Force community. AFA’s social media team may choose to follow organisations and individuals involved with, or actively discussing relevant issues. Individuals and organisations choosing to follow AFA may be followed, friended or your posts shared or connected to in return.  However, AFA only contacts individuals who have initiated the communication through social media.

You may request that AFA stop following you by a request to the account, emailing admin@raafa.org.auor by blocking AFA’s account using the block function in the relevant social media account. You are reminded that social media operates in a public space on the internet and most interactions are publicly viewable and searchable over time. For more information on how best to manage your interactions visit the social media account’s host website e.g. www.facebook.com.

AFA social media team responses should be considered as comparatively informal especially when they are dealing with enquiries and direct messages sent via our social media accounts. AFA has formal procedures for providing support and can only respond to emails, post and phone.

AFA’s social media team periodically monitors accounts during business hours (Australian Eastern Standard Time). The accounts may also be intermittently monitored outside business hours subject to staff availability; AFA reserves the right to remove any posts not complying with acceptable use.

Third party sites or profiles linked from our social media accounts are not controlled, maintained or endorsed by AFA to the extent permitted by law. AFA is not responsible or liable for any content posted on or uploaded to our social media accounts by a user or any content on third party sites linked to by our social media accounts.

From time to time, AFA may send you information, including promotional material, about AFA, our products and services, activities and events. You consent to AFA using your personal information for sending you such information, now and in the future. You also consent to AFA sending you such information by means of direct mail, phone or email.

If you do not wish to receive or if you wish to modify how you receive or how much direct marketing communication you receive from AFA, please contact AFA at admin@raafa.org.au.

AFA may need to disclose your personal information to others to carry out its activities, including the purposes described in this Privacy Statement. Depending on the nature of your engagement with AFA, AFA may disclose your personal information to:

• External support services: to health care professionals, lawyers, other professionals, counsellors, funders, financiers, co-ordinators, volunteers, service providers, agencies and not-for-profits that provide support services;
• Third parties for marketing purposes: AFA may provide your contact details to other like-minded organisations to contact you with information that may be of interest to you, where you have consented to AFA doing so. From time to time, AFA participates in data collectives where AFA shares your personal information (other than sensitive information) with other like-minded organisations;
• Contractors and service providers: who perform services on our behalf, such as mailing houses, printers, information technology services providers (including offshore cloud computing service providers), database contractors and telemarketing agencies;
• Corporate partners: who may through AFA Limited wish to provide special offers to AFA members or supporters; and
• AFA’s state and territory AFA organisations: that comprise the federation of Air Force Association divisions.

Your personal information will be stored on a password protected electronic database, which may be one on one of the Association’s state or territory division’s databases, a database maintained by a cloud hosting service provider or other third party database storage or server provider. Backups of electronic information are currently written backup disks.

AFA soft and hard copy information is generally stored in its office, which is electronically secured to prevent unauthorised entry. It may be stored for a time with a third party for specific purposes, for example at a mailing house.

Any personal information not actively being used is archived, usually for seven years or earlier, after which time it is securely destroyed.

Where personal information is stored with a third party, AFA has arrangements which require those third parties to maintain the security of the information. AFA takes reasonable steps to protect the privacy and security of that information, but AFA is not liable for any unauthorised access or use of that information.

Your personal information will stay on the database indefinitely until you advise you would like it removed, unless AFA de-identifies it or destroys it earlier in accordance with privacy law requirements.

Due to the complexity of AFA’s operations, your personal information may be stored simultaneously in more than one database or location.

AFA complies with the Payment Card Industry standards when handling payment card transactions. This means that AFA handles payment card information extremely securely while transactions are made, and do not retain payment card details afterwards.

AFA uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates which is the industry standard for encrypting your credit card and debit card numbers, bank account details, your name and address so that it cannot be viewed by any third party over the internet. Your financial information is encrypted on its contracted servers and access to this information is restricted to authorised AFA staff or authorised personnel at supplier agencies.

AFA will, upon your request, and subject to applicable privacy laws, provide you with access to your personal information that is held by AFA. However, AFA request that you identify, as clearly as possible, the type/s of information requested. AFA will endeavour to deal with your request to provide access to your personal information as soon as practicable, and in any case within seven days.  

Your rights to access personal information are not absolute and in certain circumstances, privacy laws dictate that AFA is required to grant access such as:

• access would pose a serious threat to the life, safety or health of any individual or to public health or public safety;
• access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals
• the request is frivolous or vexatious;
• denying access is required or authorised by a law or a court or tribunal order;
• access would be unlawful, or
• access may prejudice commercial negotiations, legal proceedings, enforcement activities or appropriate action being taken in respect of a suspected unlawful activity or serious misconduct

You may ask AFA to update or delete the personal information AFA holds about you at any time. AFA will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making any corrections to or deletion of your information. AFA also have obligations to take reasonable steps to correct personal information its holds when it is satisfied that it is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading for the purpose for which it is held. To assist AFA in this, you need to provide true, accurate, current and complete information about yourself as requested, and promptly update the information provided to AFA to keep it true, accurate, current and complete.

If you require access to, or wish to update your personal information, please contact AFA in any of the ways set out under ‘Contact, complaints and further information’, below. AFA  will use all reasonable efforts to correct the information. You may be required to authenticate your identity by providing your personal information or the personal information of others, such as your authorised representative or the person for whom you are an authorised representative.

Sometimes a person may deal with AFA anonymously or by using pseudonym, such as when making a general enquiry. The nature of these calls may be recorded for evaluation purposes (for example assessing an issue associated with an administrative or advocacy matter). However, in most circumstances AFA will not be able to deal with persons in this way for practical or regulatory reasons.

If you:

• have any questions in relation to the Privacy Policy, including this Privacy Statement or the information handling procedures of AFA,
• wish to make a complaint regarding the treatment or a breach of your privacy,
• would like to access your personal information held by AFA,
• would like to opt out of direct marketing, or
• would like to correct your personal information held by AFA,

please contact the Privacy Officer in any of the following ways:

• email: admin@raafa.org.au
• ordinary mail addressed to:

Privacy Officer

Air Force Association Ltd

Suite 3, 24 Camberwell Road

HAWTHORN BC, VIC  3123

AFA may need you to provide more information about your concern. If your concern is bona-fide, AFA will investigate the issue and endeavour to provide you with a written response within 28 days of receipt of your written query. Sometimes AFA might not be able to provide you with a written response within the timeframe specified. If that is the case, AFA will contact you and explain the reason for the delay and give you a new timeframe for a written response.

If you are not satisfied with our response, please notify the Privacy Officer in writing. AFA can escalate your matter and review the response that you were given. This may involve an escalation to the next level of management or referral to AFA Ltd’s National Secretary. You may also direct your issue to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s website at: www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints/

You are entitled to make an anonymous complaint or inquiry in relation to the Privacy Policy (including this Privacy Statement) or your privacy rights. However, AFA may require you to identify yourself if required by law or if it is impracticable for AFA to deal with your matter otherwise.