HIGH Court judge Michael Kirby has been awarded Australia's first Privacy Medal, 30 years after he championed the individual's right to privacy and sparked new laws enshrining privacy protections that were enacted across the developed world.
Justice Kirby, who was honoured at a dinner marking the 20th birthday of Australia's Privacy Act in Sydney last night, accepted the medal "with encouragement for those working in the field to continue the very important work we do for the defence of privacy and individual dignity in our community".
"Privacy is integral to our personalities, and it's essential to our homes, our families and our very identity," he said.
With a major review of the act by the Australian Law Reform Commission just completed, Justice Kirby pointed to the difficulties of improving privacy protections in the face of massive advances in technology.
"These changes have produced important new challenges, which the ALRC has now placed before the parliament and the community," he said.
"I noted, of course, the responses in the local media, which have been overwhelmingly negative, but we don't normally in our rule of law country leave it to those who are affected to be judges in their own cause.
"Normally we lay down the principles either in parliament
or in the courts, and it's preferable that they be laid down in parliament."
Justice Kirby said it was 60 years since "Mrs Roosevelt and her committee produced the universal declaration of human rights", which was adopted by the General Assembly of the UN with (Australian jurist and politician) HV Evatt in the chair as president.
"That started the great moves of the international community towards the statement of the fundamental principle of respecting the privacy of individuals," Justice Kirby said.
Special Minister of State John Faulkner said Justice Kirby had "not only grappled with the thorny issues, but communicated those challenges and opportunities to a wider audience", and had made an outstanding contribution to the recognition of privacy rights and the development of privacy law.
Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis said that in his capacity as chair of the ALRC, Justice Kirby produced two reports on privacy which, with the OECD guidelines, were critical to the development of Australia's Privacy Act in 1988.
"Justice Kirby led the development of the 1980 OECD guidelines on the protection of privacy and the trans-border flows of personal data," she said.
"Those guidelines are still the basis for privacy laws, not only in Australia but in most developed nations."
"Justice Kirby also chaired the OECD expert group on security of information systems, whose work produced the 1992 guidelines on information security."
Ms Curtis also announced the winners in other categories including business and government. Telstra, Medicare, Data Solutions Australia, the federal Child Support Agency and the NSW branch of the Australian Dental Association were on the list.