Privacy policy

Introduction

Australasian Railway Association (hereafter known as ‘the ARA’) regards customer privacy as an important part of our relationship with our customers. The following privacy policy applies to all ARA members their employees and officers, users of the ARA’s website or services including those interested in receiving information from the ARA, purchasers of any ARA product, attendees at ARA functions and committees, and participants in the Rail Industry Worker Program.

Collection of Information (General)

In order to use the ARA website, to receive information from the ARA, or to purchase goods or services from ARA we may require information from you in order to provide the best service possible.

All correspondence may also be collected and stored, particularly in regard to sales, support and accounts, including Email.

Any information collected by ARA is collected:

  1. from correspondence from you or your organisation This may be via the telephone, Email, mail, fax or directly through our website;
  2. from third parties (for example your employer or from the Provider of the Rail Industry Worker Program); and
  3. from publicly available sources.

The types of personal information that the ARA collects includes:

  1. your full name;
  2. your age (or date of birth) and gender;
  3. your contact details (including a postal and/or business address, Email address, telephone or fax number);
  4. your occupation including job title and employer;
  5. your credit card or bank account information (where we are providing or receiving goods or services); and
  6. (if attending functions or events arranged by or on behalf of the ARA) your dietary and special needs (including your accessibility needs).

Collection of Information (Rail Industry Worker Program)

The Rail Industry Worker Program (also referred to as the RIW Program) is a competency management system that aims to establish a cohesive, national approach to competency management for employees and contractors working in rail. The RIW Program is owned and endorsed by the ARA on behalf of its members but the ARA engages third parties to deliver and manage the RIW Program. From 28 June 2019 that third party will be Metro Trains Australia Pty Ltd (the Provider). The collection, use and disclosure of personal information (including sensitive information) that is uploaded or shared through the RIW Program is governed by this privacy policy and by the Provider’s privacy policy. For more information about the type of information that is collected and how it is used and disclosed, view the Provider’s privacy policy which is available here: https://www.riw.net.au/privacy-policy/

As the owner of the RIW Program, the ARA is entitled to view and use the information within the RIW Program to develop and manage the RIW Program and to fulfil its role as the peak body for the rail industry (including research and reporting on de-identified data). The Provider grants the ARA access to the data within the RIW Program. The raw data which may be provided to the ARA is not accessible by, nor provided by the ARA to, any members of the ARA. Individual RIW Program participants will own their own data but the ARA has an irrevocable licence to use that Data for the ARA’s purposes. The ARA will own all merged/de-identified data and reporting from the RIW program.

Use of Collection Information

Any personal information collected (including via the RIW Program) is used for the following purposes:

  1. to undertake our business activities including to represent the rail industry, to connect and knowledge-share information about the rail industry, and to develop initiatives relevant to the rail industry;
  2. to provide you with our products and/or services, and a high level of customer service (including for billing purposes and to fill your orders);
  3. to develop, manage and identify changes to the RIW Program to ensure it operates effectively and in compliance with the legislation, to conduct research and report on the effectiveness of the RIW Program and the safety and compliance of the rail industry broadly;
  4. to consider making offers of employment or to maintain details of the ARA’s existing employees;
  5. to train and assist in our staff development;
  6. to receive services from third party organisations or their employees;
  7. to comply with our legal obligations; and
  8. to provide information relevant to the rail industry and for marketing purposes.

Storage and Security of Collected Information

The security of your personal information is important to us. ARA will take reasonable steps to protect the personal information that we hold from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. You should be aware that the internet is not a secure environment and information sent via the internet (including via email) may be intercepted by a third party.

All personal information collected by ARA through this website is stored electronically in a secure database. We will not store personal information for longer than necessary and when it is no longer required, it shall be deleted from the database. If, from time to time, any information stored by ARA in electronic form is reproduced in hardcopy pursuant to the uses described in this policy, or as otherwise permitted or required under law, ARA shall ensure that such hardcopies are stored securely at its office premises and shall see to the safe destruction of any such hardcopies within the same period as the electronic data to which it corresponds.

We currently do not collect payments via our website. We do accept some payment via our MYOB online payments and therefore your account information may be stored in our MYOB software. We can collect your Credit Card information by phone, email or fax. We will only store such information for so long as it is reasonably necessary to process the relevant transactions.

We use Eventbrite to organise the invitations and receive payment for our events. Eventbrite does not pass on your payment information to the ARA, so please review Eventbrite’s terms and conditions for more information on the security of your payments.

If we establish online payment processes then we will ensure that we will encrypt that information using a secure socket layer technology (SSL). We do not intend to permanently store complete Credit Card details.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect all other personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.

If you have any questions about security on our Website, you can email us at [email protected].

Access and Alteration to Collected Information

If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our services or goods, you may correct, update, delete or deactivate your personal information by emailing us at [email protected].

Changes to your data in the RIW Program can be made via website www.riw.net.au, email [email protected] or phone 1300 101 682.

In circumstances where we no longer need your personal information for any of our purposes, we will de-identify and destroy your personal information.

Communications and Marketing

Direct marketing occurs where entities such as the ARA use the personal information they collect to market related or other goods and services to the individual who provided the information. A common example is where we email individuals newsletters and notifications of events and courses.

We may send you direct marketing communications and information about services that we consider may be of interest to you (including sending upcoming event notifications to previous attendees of an ARA event). These communications may be sent in various forms including via mail, email, fax or SMS.

If at any time you do not wish to receive such correspondence or marketing materials, you can request to be removed from any mailing lists by emailing us at [email protected].

Disclosure of Information to Third Parties

We share our information with the TrackSAFE Foundation that is co-located in our office. The TrackSAFE Foundation is the harm prevention charity established by the rail industry to reduce near collisions, injuries and fatalities on the rail network resulting from suicide, reckless behaviour and human error.

We sometimes share information with third parties in order to fulfil the purposes described above. These third parties include our service providers, the State and Commonwealth Government agencies.

Specifically for events:

  1. in some circumstances we will brief the speakers, panellists and sponsors of the events about the landscape of the audience (for example, we may use de-identified personal information such as gender, average age, industry type of all participants) but we do not provide them with personal information or contact details for individual attendees to these parties; and
  2. we will create networking booklets for award nights, networking dinners, lunches and training courses that will list the individual attendee’s name and employer organisation which are available for all attendees.
    Specifically for ARA groups and committees, we disclose the contact details of group members to each other members of the relevant ARA group or committee (including emails and phone numbers) to enable the group and/or committee to effectively communicate directly with one another.

We also share contact details of our member primary contacts to Informa and Prime Creative (Rail Directory) for the purposes of applying ARA member benefits.

Where reasonably practical or where the provision of information is outside the scope of our purposes, you will be notified when your personal information is being provided to any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

ARA may, however, at its discretion use other third parties to provide essential services on our Website or for our business processes. We may share your details as necessary for the third party to provide that service. We restrict these third parties from using your personal information for any other purpose.

ARA does not share any information with third parties for any unknown or unrelated uses.

Legal

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on the ARA.

Cookies

When you access our websites, we may send a “cookie” (which is a small summary file containing a unique ID number) to your computer. This enables us to recognise your computer and greet you each time you visit our website without bothering you with a request to register. It also enables us to keep track of services you view so that, if you consent, we can send you news about those services. We also use cookies to measure traffic patterns, to determine which areas of our website have been visited and to measure transaction patterns in the aggregate. We use this to research our users’ habits so that we can improve our online services. Our cookies do not collect personal information. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them. We may log IP addresses (that is, the electronic addresses of computers connected to the internet) to analyse trends, administer the website, track users movements, and gather broad demographic information.

Application of the Privacy Policy

The terms and conditions set out in this privacy policy apply to the following domains and the ARA generally:

  1. www.ara.net.au;
  2. http://railcareers.net.au;
  3. http://railindustryawards.com.au;
  4. https://www.smartrail.net.au;
  5. www.ausrail.com; and
  6. www.riw.net.au (although this website is also covered by the RIW Program Provider’s privacy policy).

Changes to Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently.

Contact Us for Further Information

Should you have any questions about this privacy policy, or wish to lodge a complaint about a potential breach of the privacy policy by the ARA, please contact the ARA’s Privacy Officer via email [email protected] or phone 02 6270 4500

The ARA will endeavor to respond to an individual communication within thirty (30) days. Should the ARA fail to respond within a thirty-day period, an individual may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which can investigate questions or complaints in relation to a potential breach of the Australian Privacy Principles.

Disclaimer

The Australasian Railway Association (ARA) website, and any material published therein, is provided for information purposes only. It is not intended to be and should not be relied upon as legal or technical advice. The information is provided on the basis that readers will be responsible for making their own assessment of the content presented. The information does not constitute professional advice and should not be relied upon as such.

The ARA website is a database of information from various sources that may be of some assistance to its users. The ARA does not give any guarantee, undertaking or warranty that the information provided is comprehensive and covers every circumstance potentially relevant in the rail industry. Users should consult other sources of information and not rely on the ARA website as their only source of information.

All reasonable efforts were taken to ensure that the information provided was accurate at the time of release on the internet; however changes in circumstances after a document is placed on the internet may impact on the accuracy of the information.

The ARA does not invite reliance upon, nor accept responsibility for, the information it provides. The ARA does not give any guarantees, undertakings or warranties concerning the accuracy, completeness or up-to-date nature of the information provided.

Hypertext links on the ARA website are (in most cases) inserted by the ARA, not by the data providers. However, links on the ARA website to external entities are not covered within this policy and are in no way meant to imply that the ARA endorses, sponsors, promotes or is affiliated with the owners of or participants in those sites unless expressly stated.

Collection, Use and Storage of Personal Information

You may anonymously browse ARA’s website without providing any personal information (although we will collect cookies).

ARA does collect some personal information if you choose to supply it to us through our website forms. By filling out these forms and providing personal information through this website, you consent to ARA collecting, storing and using this information as set out in the ARA’s Privacy Policy.

Association Number
A03958

ABN
64 217 302 489