If an organisation will not recognise your rights under the Privacy Act, you can make a complaint to them.
For example, you might make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner because the organisation:
Make your complaint in writing (by email or letter), explaining what your complaint is about and what you want them to do about it.
If you are not happy with their response to your complaint, you can go to the Privacy Commissioner.
Generally, the Privacy Commissioner will not investigate a complaint unless you have tried making a complaint to the organisation first.
Find out how to make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner and how they can help you.
If you request records held by a court, from a case where you were not the defendant or plaintiff the judicial officer (Judge) of the court may choose to deny your request.
If you are a survivor of abuse in care and you are requesting court records about you, the courts will generally grant you access to the documents, especially if this is to support a claim.
If you request court records from any other organisation, for example Disability Support Services, normal Privacy Act and Official Information Act (OIA) rules apply, unless there is a court order or rule preventing them from providing these records to you.
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This webpage is about what you can do if an organisation does not:
The Privacy Act is a law that tells organisations how information must be:
Here records means the information an organisation has kept / made about a person.
Here guardianship is when an adult is put in charge of the care of a person.
A guardian should
Here being in the care of others means when an organisation is put in charge of a person.
The organisation decides for the person things like:
You have the legal right to access your records.
Here a legal right means there is a law that gives you the power to do something like ask for your records.
You have the right to ask an organisation like a government agency for your personal information.
Personal information means information about you.
You have the right to access your records under the Privacy Act.
When you ask for your records organisations should give you:
or
Click here to find out about the reasons you may not be given access to your records.
Sometimes an organisation will not give you the information you have the right to ask for under the Privacy Act.
Organisations must follow what the Privacy Act says about what to do about the information it holds.
You can make a complaint to the organisation if you are not given the information.
You can make your complaint to the organisation by writing:
You will need to tell the organisations what:
If you are unhappy with how the organisation deals with your complaint you can contact the Privacy Commissioner.
The work the Privacy Commissioner does is guided by the Privacy Act.
You can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner if an organisation:
Working days are:
Redact means hiding / taking out some information in a document.
This could be because there is information about other people in your records.
This is often done with a thick black line.
Click here to learn more about redactions.
You can also make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner if an organisation:
Click here to find out how to make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner.
Information held by the court is not covered by the:
A court is a place where things about the law are worked out.
The court may decide not to give you the records you have asked for.
This can be because you were not part of the legal matters that took place in court.
If you are a survivor of abuse in care the courts will usually give you the records you have asked for.
People who have been through abuse in care are called survivors.
Here abuse is when somebody has been hurt by somebody when they were in care.
You can ask for court records from other organisations like Disability Support Services.
These places should follow the rules set out in the:
They cannot give you the information if there is a reason. Like if the court has said no.
Click here to find out more about asking for court records.
Getting your records about when you were in the care and guardianship of others can make you feel lots of things.
It can be good to have someone to talk to about it.
You can talk to your:
Kōnae has information on where to get support if you want to talk about how it feels to get your records.
Click here to find out what support you can get.
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Click here to download the information on this webpage as a PDF.
More Easy Read information is available.
Click here to visit our Easy Read library webpage.
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