Rewiring Australia Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Rewiring Australia Research and Advocacy Ltd (ABN 18 664 239 196) (“Rewiring Australia”, “we”, “us” or “our”) collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information, and how we manage personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

By visiting our website, signing up to our mailing list, making a donation, purchasing from our online shop, using Electric Saul, or otherwise providing us with your personal information, you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as described in this policy.

A copy of the Australian Privacy Principles is available from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at https://www.oaic.gov.au/.

What is personal information?

Personal information is information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information is true or not and whether recorded in a material form or not.

Sensitive information is a subset of personal information and includes information about a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, health, or sexual orientation. We do not intentionally collect sensitive information unless it is specifically required, and you have consented.

What personal information we collect

The personal information we collect depends on how you interact with us. It may include:

  • Contact details: name, email address, phone number, postcode, and billing/delivery address.
  • Donation details: payment information (credit card details processed via third-party payment processors), donation history, and gift amounts.
  • Household information: details about home appliances and energy assets you voluntarily provide (for example, through surveys or programme applications).
  • Shopping information: purchase history, order details, and delivery preferences collected through our online store.
  • Website usage data: cookies, device identifiers, IP addresses, and browsing behaviour collected automatically when you visit our website.
  • Supporter information: campaign actions taken, petition signatures, and engagement history.
  • Electric Saul content and uploads: information you provide when using Electric Saul, including your home profile details, questions and messages you submit, and files you upload (such as energy bills, photos and other documents).
  • Electric Saul outputs: outputs generated for you (for example, summaries, action plans, and installer-ready briefs). These outputs may include personal information depending on what you provide.
  • Copy/download/share outputs: if you use Electric Saul features to copy an output to your clipboard or download an output (for example, as a PDF), you may choose to share that content with others. We do not collect the recipient’s contact details as part of those actions (because we do not send the content to recipients on your behalf), but the content you copy or download may include personal information depending on what you provided to Electric Saul.

We collect your personal information through:

  • Online donation forms.
  • Newsletter and other signup forms, including surveys.
  • Our online store.
  • Cookies and tracking technologies on our website.
  • Our customer relationship management platform.

Why we collect, use and disclose your personal information

We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following primary purposes:

  • Processing and receipting donations made to us.
  • Operating and fulfilling orders through our online shop.
  • Communicating with you about our campaigns, news, events, and fundraising activities.
  • Personalising and improving your experience with us, including tailoring communications to your interests and location.
  • Conducting research and analysis to improve our programmes and supporter engagement.
  • Complying with our legal obligations.

We may also use personal information in the following ways:

  • Improving our digital services and informing our work: we may review information (including personal information) you provide when using Electric Saul or other Rewiring Australia digital tools to help us operate, maintain and improve those services. For example, we may use this information to improve how Electric Saul responds to questions, including by improving our internal knowledge, data and service performance. We may also use aggregated insights from this information to inform our advocacy and programme work (for example, by identifying common issues experienced by groups of users), and to create anonymised or de-identified statistics that we may refer to publicly (for example, “over 30% of people using Electric Saul are considering purchasing an EV”).
  • What we won’t do: we will not publish or quote your personal information in a way that could reasonably identify you. If we want to use your story, quotes, or other information in a way that identifies you, we will seek your explicit permission first.
  • Export action logs: we may keep limited logs of export actions (such as a timestamp and success/failure status) for service operation, security and abuse prevention. Where we keep logs, we aim to minimise personal information and retain those logs only for as long as reasonably necessary for those purposes.

We will not use or disclose your personal information for purposes other than those for which it was collected unless:

  • you have consented to the alternative use or disclosure;
  • we are required or authorised to do so by law or a court/tribunal order; or
  • the use or disclosure is otherwise permitted under the Privacy Act.

Disclosure of your personal information

We do not sell your personal information. However, we disclose personal information to the following categories of third parties in order to carry out our activities.

Service providers and technology partners

We engage trusted third-party service providers to help us operate our website, process donations, manage supporter relationships, fulfil online orders, and communicate with you. These providers act on our behalf and may receive or process your personal information in the course of providing their services to us. The categories of service providers we use include:

  • Donation processing: third-party payment processors who handle credit card transactions and billing information on our behalf. These processors are contractually required to maintain appropriate security standards, and we do not store raw payment card details on our own systems.
  • Customer relationship management and communications: we use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to store supporter contact details, manage our email communications, and co-ordinate our engagement with you across our website and other channels. Your name, email address, postcode, and engagement history may be held and processed within this system.
  • Website and online shop infrastructure: our website and online store are operated through third-party platforms. Personal information submitted through our website forms or collected during purchases (including name, email address, billing and delivery address, and purchase history) is processed and stored by these platforms on our behalf.
  • Fulfilment and logistics: where you purchase goods from our online shop, we may disclose your name and delivery address to third-party fulfilment or postage providers to the extent necessary to complete your order.

We may also disclose personal information to service providers that help us operate Electric Saul, including:

  • AI and technology service providers (including Google): we use third-party technology providers to operate Electric Saul (for example, to process requests and generate responses). These providers may process personal information on our behalf in order to deliver the service.
  • Google “no training” arrangement: we use a paid version of Google’s agent/AI platform for Electric Saul. Our arrangement is that Google does not use Electric Saul customer data to train or improve Google’s general AI models.
  • Downloadable content providers: we may disclose personal information to service providers who help us generate, store or deliver downloadable content (such as PDFs) and operate Electric Saul. Some of these providers may be located overseas or process information overseas, as described under “Overseas disclosure”.

In all cases, we take reasonable steps to ensure that third-party service providers are bound by written contracts requiring them to protect your personal information and use it only for the purpose for which it was disclosed.

Advertising and analytics

We use third-party digital advertising and analytics providers to promote our work, measure the effectiveness of our campaigns, and reach new supporters. For these purposes, we may share your personal information (such as email addresses, in hashed or pseudonymised form) with advertising platforms and data analytics providers. This may include sharing data to build audience segments and to identify new supporters with similar characteristics to our existing supporter base.

We take reasonable steps to ensure that data shared with advertising and analytics providers is transmitted securely and that our arrangements with those providers are consistent with our obligations under applicable privacy laws.

You may opt out of interest-based advertising through the settings available on the advertising platforms you use, or by contacting us using the details below.

Other disclosures

We may also disclose your personal information:

  • where required or authorised by law (including to law enforcement or regulatory bodies);
  • to professional advisors (for example, lawyers and accountants) under obligations of confidentiality; and
  • in the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, subject to appropriate confidentiality obligations.

Overseas disclosure

Some of the third-party service providers we use are based overseas, including in the United States of America.

Where we disclose personal information to overseas recipients, we take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient does not breach the APPs in relation to that information. In practice, this means we rely on contractual protections, platform data-processing agreements, or the recipient’s participation in an equivalent privacy framework.

By providing your personal information to us, you consent to it being disclosed to overseas recipients in the circumstances described in this policy. We cannot guarantee that overseas recipients will comply with Australian privacy laws, and by consenting you acknowledge this.

Security of your personal information

We take the security of your personal information seriously and take reasonable steps to protect it from misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. Our security measures include:

  • All web pages on which payment information is submitted use HTTPS/SSL encryption.
  • Credit card details are processed and tokenised by our third-party payment processor; we do not store raw credit card numbers on our own systems.
  • Access to personal information held in our CRM and other systems is restricted to authorised personnel.
  • Our third-party service providers are required, under contract or their own policies, to maintain appropriate data security standards.

If we become aware of a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm to any individual whose personal information is involved, we will notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and affected individuals as required under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

When your personal information is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it.

Retention of personal information

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary to provide our services and for our legitimate business purposes, including maintaining records, providing account and conversation history features, complying with legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing our agreements.

For Electric Saul, this may include retaining your conversation history and any files you upload (such as bills or photos) so that those documents can be displayed within your Electric Saul conversations and accessed again later.

If you would like us to delete your Electric Saul account or delete content associated with your Electric Saul use, you can contact us at electricsaul@rewiringaustralia.org and we will take reasonable steps to comply, subject to any legal or operational requirements to retain certain records.

We may need to verify your identity before processing a deletion request.

Cookies and tracking technologies

Our website uses cookies and similar tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience, measure website performance, and enable advertising functions. Cookies are small text files stored on your device by your browser.

We use the following types of cookies:

  • Essential cookies: required for the website to function (for example, shopping cart and form submission).
  • Analytics cookies: used to understand how visitors use our website.
  • Advertising cookies: used by our advertising partners to deliver relevant ads and measure ad effectiveness.

You can control or disable cookies through your browser settings. Note that disabling certain cookies may affect the functionality of our website. Where required by law, we will seek your consent before placing non-essential cookies on your device.

Access to and correction of your personal information

You may request access to the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant, or misleading. We will not charge a fee for an access request but may charge a reasonable fee for the cost of giving access if the request is complex.

To request access or correction, please contact our Privacy Officer using the details below. We may require you to verify your identity before releasing any personal information. We will not release personal information to a third party on your behalf unless we can verify that you have authorised that release.

We will respond to access and correction requests within a reasonable time. If we deny an access or correction request, we will give you written reasons and information about how to make a complaint.

Opting out of communications

You may unsubscribe from our email communications at any time by:

  • clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any marketing email we send you; or
  • contacting us directly using the details below.

Please note that even if you unsubscribe from marketing communications, we may still need to contact you for transactional purposes (for example, order confirmations, donation receipts, or service-related notices).

You may also opt out of interest-based advertising through the settings available on the advertising platforms you use, or by contacting us using the details below.

Quality of personal information

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we hold is accurate, complete, and up to date at the time we collect it and when we use or disclose it. If you believe the information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, please contact us so we can update our records.

Policy updates

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable law. The current version will always be available on our website. Where changes are material, we will take reasonable steps to notify you (for example, by email or a notice on our website). Your continued use of our services following any update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

Privacy complaints and enquiries

If you have a question, concern, or complaint about how we handle your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer in the first instance. We take all privacy complaints seriously and will respond within a reasonable time (generally 30 days).

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC):

  • Website: www.oaic.gov.au
  • Phone: 1300 363 992
  • Post: GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001

Contact us

Privacy Officer

Rewiring Australia

Suite 517 / 55 Miller Street

Pyrmont NSW 2009

Australia

Email: hello@rewiringaustralia.org