I am a member of an organisation in Queensland, Australia. Previously
we had access to the membership database to allow contact with each
other. We have been advised that under the current Privacy Act we can
no longer supply e-mail addresses.

This doesn't seem to be logical if, as we are advised, we can still
provide address, telephone number and fax number.

Is our advice correct and is there any way round it?

Hi kelvyn,
have you looked at the act?  Seems to me that the Q'land Privacy Act
applies to the gov't only: 
http://www.justice.qld.gov.au/dept/factsht29.htm

This site  - which I have not read through -  may apply more to
private organizations:

http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/npps01.html

Here is the upstream link: 

http://www.privacy.gov.au/privacy_rights/laws/

Here is another site, the html version:

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:d_SZwNXwCRwJ:www.claytonutz.com/downloads/Privacy%2520Regimes%2520Operating%2520in%2520Australia.pdf+queensland+%22privacy+act%22&hl=de&client=firefox-a

(That may be record length!  Search yourself with   queensland "privacy act")

THis is no professional or legal advice (please read the disclaimer
below), but as long as the individuals agree that their e-mail
addresses are divulged to a group of persons that they accept, that
doesn't breach a protection of privacy law.  They agreed.  Of course,
the info could not them be passed on to anyone else.
Maybe to protect your organisation, you should have the members send
you and e-mail or snailmail confirmation that they agree to their
e-mail address' being passed on to other members of the organization
who also agree thereto with the proviso for all that the addresses may
not be passed on to third parties.
As long as no misused  occurs, who can complain?

But, maybe your inspection of the links will prove my assumption to be wrong.
Good luck!

Kelvyn,

Is the advice you have been given regarding the QLD privacy act or the
Federal Privacy Act. I don't know anything about the Qeeensland Act
but the Federal Act has recently been ammended (about a year and 1/2
ago i think) and elements of that  Act apply to the private sector.
The Commonwealth (ie Federal) Act is the Privacy Act 1988 (but as i
said it's been ammended since 1988.

see
http://www.privacy.gov.au/act/

I have previously written memos on the Privacy Act for work but my
memory of it is a bit fuzzy. But what you are saying doesn't really
seem logical. The Act does impose limits on provision of peoples
personal info- including contact info but there is no special
distinction re email addresses as opposed to fax/phone/snailmail
address. As myorin-ga says, if in doubt obtain signed consents from
people as the whole basis of the legislation is not that you can't
divulge particular info that's deemed "private" but that you need
people's consent to do so.

The Privacy Act includes National Privacy Principles (NPP's) that
apply to private organisations- the website i listed previously talks
about them and you can look at them by clicking through to
http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/npps01.html

There are also advisory guidelines to the NPP's that advise how
organisations can comply, you can download them at
http://www.privacy.gov.au/act/guidelines/index.html#3.2
-look at the business ones

the NPP's and guidelines are in plain language rather than legal
jargon and they are quite helpful, the guidelines are particularly
good at making sense of the NPP's.

There is also an FAQ page- http://www.privacy.gov.au/faqs/index.html
which might answer your questions

hope this is helpful

Cheers,

Lubs