The Right to Privacy and the Australian Constitution

Abstract

It is rather ironic that I am speaking about the right to privacy as a constitutional issue in Australia at the tail end of 2020. For this was a year in which it was abundantly clear that we in Australia have no constitutional right to privacy, whether ‘privacy’ is understood in the traditional sense of freedom from intrusion into private life, or in a more extended sense of control over personal information (alternatively termed ‘data protection’ or ‘data privacy’). Yet we do have an implied constitutional freedom of political communication inherent in the democratic principles of our Constitution established in 1900: or so the Australian High Court has held in a series of cases dating back..