Privacy Policy

1. About NLEC

The National Lived Experience Commission (ABN 79 919 184 486) is a registered Australian charity listed on the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) Charity Register. NLEC operates as an independent public-interest organisation. Enquiries regarding this policy should be directed to commissioner@nlec.au.

2. What personal information we collect

NLEC may collect the following categories of personal information:

• Contact enquiries: Name, email address, organisation name (optional), enquiry type, and message content submitted through the contact form on this website.
• Research and evidence collection: If you participate in NLEC's National Evidence Collection Program (surveys, interviews, focus groups, or advisory panels), we collect information you choose to share about your lived experience, demographics, and reform domain experience. Participation is always voluntary.
• Contributor expressions of interest: The National Contributor Network form collects your contact information, experience domains, engagement preferences, and any optional skills, boundaries, support needs or conflicts you choose to provide. We use these details to assess suitable opportunities and contact you with your consent. An expression of interest does not become public evidence or grant permission to publish your individual account.
• Private cross-system accounts: The separate intake collects the systems involved, your written account and consent choices; it collects your email address only if you opt into follow-up. You may attach one PDF (PDF filename and application/pdf MIME type, maximum 5 MB). The one-use upload permission expires after 15 minutes. An accepted file is stored privately, initially quarantined, with a 90-day expiry. The service schedules an hourly deletion sweep; failed deletions are retried, so removal may be delayed. Authorised reviewers can download a file only after a malware scan reports clean and before it expires. If scanning is unavailable, the file remains quarantined; if malware is detected, it is blocked from download. Please omit identifying and sensitive details. Written accounts are unverified, restricted to authorised staff review and are not published through this intake or treated as established findings. The 90-day document expiry is not a retention period for the written account. Contact us with your reference to request access, correction or removal; this is a staff-reviewed request, not self-service withdrawal or a guarantee of erasure, and legal retention obligations may apply.
• Correspondence: Personal information contained in emails or other communications you send directly to NLEC.

We do not collect payment card information, government identifiers, or sensitive biometric data through this website.

3. Sensitive information

Some information NLEC collects — particularly through its evidence collection program — may be sensitive information as defined under the Privacy Act, including health information, mental health information, information about experiences of family violence, criminal justice contact, disability, or other matters of a personal nature.

NLEC collects sensitive information only with your consent, only for purposes directly related to our charitable functions, and only where you have chosen to share it. Sensitive information is handled with additional security measures and is not disclosed without your consent except where required by law.

4. How we use your information

NLEC uses personal information only for the following purposes:

• Responding to your enquiry or request.
• Providing services you have requested (including commissioned research, advisory services, or consultation facilitation).
• Conducting lived experience evidence collection in accordance with our research ethics framework and participant consent.
• Publishing aggregated, de-identified intelligence in NLEC reports and publications. Individual accounts are never published without explicit consent.
• Meeting our legal obligations under Australian law, including mandatory reporting obligations.

We do not use your personal information for direct marketing without your explicit consent, and you may withdraw consent at any time.

5. Disclosure of personal information

NLEC does not sell, rent, or trade personal information. We may disclose personal information only in the following limited circumstances:

• To service providers who assist NLEC in operating this website or providing services, under contractual obligations to protect your information.
• Where required or authorised by Australian law (including mandatory reporting obligations).
• With your explicit consent.

NLEC does not disclose personal information to overseas recipients unless required by law or with your explicit consent.

6. Security

NLEC takes reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. Contact form submissions are transmitted via encrypted connections. Email correspondence is retained securely.

NLEC retains personal information for as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, or as required by law. General enquiry correspondence is typically retained for seven years consistent with standard charity record-keeping obligations. Private cross-system report PDFs have a 90-day expiry and are subject to an hourly deletion sweep; failed deletions are retried, so expiry does not guarantee removal at an exact time. The written account and related report record are separate from the PDF: no automatic text-record expiry is implemented. Contact us with your reference to request access, correction or removal; this is a contact-based request, not self-service withdrawal. The intake does not provide a report-level deletion function, and legal retention obligations may apply.

7. Access and correction

You may request access to personal information NLEC holds about you, or request correction of information you believe is inaccurate, by contacting commissioner@nlec.au. NLEC will respond within 30 days. In some circumstances, NLEC may decline an access request where permitted by the Privacy Act, and will explain the reason in writing.

8. Website analytics and cookies

Some website interactions call an optional analytics helper if an analytics service is available in the browser. The helper sends named interaction events and, on some events, page-link metadata; it may also include utm_source, utm_campaign and utm_content values from the page URL. The website source does not configure that service or establish its retention, cookie or identification practices, and it does not configure automatic page-view or referral tracking. The private report and contact forms do not pass their submitted text or fields to this helper. Avoid putting personal information in URL tracking parameters. We found no advertising-pixel configuration in the website source.

9. Links to other websites

This website may contain links to external websites not operated by NLEC. NLEC is not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites and encourages you to review their privacy policies separately.

10. Changes to this policy

NLEC may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The current version is always available at this URL. Material changes will be noted in the "Last updated" date above.

11. Complaints

If you have a complaint about how NLEC has handled your personal information, please contact us at commissioner@nlec.au. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.