Terms

COMPLIANCE FORUM TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Don’t ignore these terms – they include important information including when you may incur fees.  This is a public forum, and we do not take responsibility for the questions, comments or other content posted by users.  This site is also the home of our Tailored Regulatory Exchange Service.  For more information on that service, click on the red T-REX logo at www.complianceforum.com.au.

1. Acceptance of Terms

1.1 By using the website, including the paid subscriber section of the website (referred to collectively as “the Site”) you agree to comply with and be bound by these terms and conditions, the Privacy Policy and all other rules, policies and disclaimers which you are notified of on the Site (referred to collectively as “Terms”).  Please review all of the Terms carefully before using the Site. If you do not agree with all of the Terms, do not use the Site.

2. No legal advice

2.1 HNLaw Pty Ltd (ACN 068367046) trading as Holley Nethercote Lawyers and Holley Nethercote (both businesses are referred to collectively as “HNLaw”, “we”, “our”, “us”) has established the Site.  However, HNLaw does not provide any legal advice on the Site.  Any statements written by representatives of HNLaw do not constitute legal advice and cannot be relied upon by you as if it were legal advice.

3. Liability

3.1 As far as is permitted by law, we exclude all liability to third parties arising directly or indirectly out of their use of or reliance on the information and materials contained in the Site.  In the event that liability cannot be excluded by law, our liability will be limited to spending up to 30 minutes of one of our lawyers’ time, or the equivalent monetary amount.

3.2 We do not warrant that the files contained in, linked to, or referred to in the Site are free of viruses or other defects.  In the event that liability cannot be excluded by law, our liability will be limited to replacing the defective file.

4. Our Relationship with Website Users

4.1 The information and materials on the Site do not constitute legal advice and your use of, and subscription to (if applicable), the Site does not of itself create a lawyer client relationship between you and HNLaw.  If you need legal advice about a specific issue, you should contact HNLaw directly at www.hnlaw.com.au.

4.2 The content of your communications via the Site are not private or confidential, nor are they protected by legal professional privilege. Your communications may be read, collected, and used by others.

5. Membership and Subscription

5.1 Membership to the public forum component of the Site (Public Forum) is free, but membership to the Tailored Regulatory Exchange Service (“TREX”) requires a monthly fee to be paid, as communicated to you from us from time to time.

5.2 We may offer special categories of membership which require different subscription fees.  Details of any such memberships and the applicable fees shall be provided when the membership is offered.

5.3 Membership of the Public Forum does not entitle you to a subscription to TREX.

6. Answering Questions

6.1 The Public Forum allows for any natural person to post questions, answers and comments (Content).  Even if we moderate the questions, answers and comments and allow it to be visible on the Site, that does not constitute an endorsement by us of the validity or accuracy of the Content.  You rely on the Content solely at your own risk.

6.2 TREX allows for TREX subscribers to comment on TREX articles that are provided to them monthly via a tailored PDF newsletter.  We do not guarantee that we will respond to those comments.  If we do respond to those comments, and the TREX subscriber has entered into a costs agreement with HNLaw, we reserve the right to charge for the time spent in answering those comments.  If the time spent in responding to those comments amounts to more than 1 hour’s work, we will confirm the cost with you before responding.

6.3 If you post a comment that includes confidential information, we may respond by “de-identifying” the question, to protect your privacy.  We cannot guarantee, however, that this will occur, given the nature of the Site, which is essentially a Public Forum and a private forum (TREX).

6.4 We reserve the right to moderate, edit (including de-identify) Content on the site.

7. Termination

7.1 You or we can terminate your membership of the Public Forum or TREX at any time.  In order to terminate your membership you can contact us requesting termination using the “contact us” form on the Site.  Your request will be processed within 30 days of receipt of your request.  We can terminate your membership of the Public Forum immediately and without notice to you. If you are a subscriber of TREX we can terminate your membership with 7 days’ written notice.

8. Security and your Member Account

8.1 To subscribe as a member of the Site you must choose a user name and password and nominate an active email account.

8.2 You may choose any user name.  In choosing your username you must not knowingly assume the identity of, or divulge confidential information about, any real person or organisation other than yourself or an organisation you are authorised to represent.  See our Privacy Policy for further information.

8.3 It is your responsibility to keep all of your membership details confidential.  It is also your responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of any other information you do not want, to any extent, shared in the forum environment or in any broader context.

8.4 We are not liable if someone else assumes your user name and password.

8.5 You indemnify us from any claim or damage arising out of the unauthorised use of your user name, password or email account and any other interaction you have with the Site.

8.6 You agree to notify us immediately if you suspect any unauthorised use of your membership details.

8.7 If you provide your access details to TREX to another person(s), we reserve the right to recover from you any damages suffered by us, including the lost income that we would have received if the other person(s) had been (a) paid subscriber(s).

9. Your Obligations and Acceptable use of the Site.

9.1 You remain solely responsible for the content of your postings or comments on the Site.  You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless with respect to any claim based upon your use of the Site including any post or comment that you may make.

9.2 You must not use the Site to disseminate defamatory, infringing, obscene, or any other unlawful content of any kind.

9.3 You must not upload files or post messages containing any material protected by intellectual property laws, rights of privacy or publication or any other applicable law unless you own or control the rights in the material, or have the consent of the controller of those rights to do so.

9.4 We reserve the right to reveal whatever information we know about you in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from any message you post in the forum.

10. Copyright and Intellectual Property.

10.1 For the purposes of copyright and intellectual property laws, any comments, posts, articles or other content published on the Site belong to us, regardless of who posted the content, unless stated otherwise.  We licence the content on the public forum component of the Site to be distributed according to a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

10.2 We do not authorise any redistribution, copying or pasting or use of the content included in the paid component of Site, unless the use is by a paid subscriber and their own respective business purposes.

10.3 Unless expressly agreed to by us, the content on either the Public Forum or TREX cannot be re-sold or provided to another party or parties for the purposes of generating profit or other commercial benefit.  We have distribution agreements that we can enter into with parties who are interested in distributing our content for commercial gain.

10.4 We reserve our rights in respect of any member or other person or entity who breaches or infringes these rights.

11. Links to or from other websites

11.1 The Site may contain links to websites controlled and produced by third parties.  Unless we specify otherwise, we do not control, endorse, sponsor or approve any other website or its content.  We take no responsibility for any aspect of any other website or the content on it.

11.2  You must not create or maintain any link from another website to this Site without our written consent.

12. Jurisdiction

12.1The Site is hosted on a server in the State of Victoria, Australia.

13. Privacy Policy

13.1 This Policy outlines our obligation to manage and protect the personal information we hold about individuals.

13.2 We are committed to the National Privacy Principles (‘NPPs’) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (C’th) (‘Privacy Act’).

13.3 ‘Personal information’ is information or an opinion relating to you, which can be used to identify you.  Some personal information which we collect is ‘sensitive information’.  Sensitive information includes your membership to a professional or trade association.

Limits on our control over your information and compliance with Privacy Laws

13.4 We accept that due to the personal or sensitive nature of information about yourself or your business you may wish to assume an alias and remain anonymous on the Site.  Our acceptance of your anonymity is conditional on your compliance with these Terms.

13.5 If you comment or post or otherwise upload information on the Site, that information may be freely displayed in your public profile, and in any public communications on the Site.  We are not liable for damage caused by the dissemination of such material and are not responsible for its removal.  Normally, we will not disclose your contact details to anyone else, without your express consent, unless to do so would be for the primary purpose (or related secondary purpose) connected to your initial provision of your contact details.

13.6 This site may be accessed by anyone anywhere in the world. Our Privacy Policy has been produced in accordance with the laws which apply in Australia.  We make no representation that our privacy policy complies with privacy laws in any other jurisdiction in which the Site may be viewed.

How we collect personal information

13.7 We generally collect personal information directly from you.  For example, when registering to become a member of the Site, you may provide us with personal or confidential information in addition to the username, password and email address required by the registration process.

13.8 Typically, the type of information we may collect and hold includes (but is not limited to) personal information about:

  • you (names, occupation, mailing address, phone number, email address, etc);
  • your business;
  • your training and compliance needs;
  • compliance or other legal issues which affect you; and
  • other people with whom we come into contact.

13.9 If the personal information we request is not provided, we may not be able to register a person as a user of the Site.

Website Collection

13.10 We collect personal information from www.complianceforum.com.au through receiving subscription applications, emails and the completion of comments or forms on the Site.  We may also use third parties to analyse traffic at that web site, which may involve the use of cookies.  Information collected through such analysis is typically anonymous, but may at times log your I.P. address.

Why do we collect personal information?

13.11 We collect personal information for the following purposes relating to the provision of our services:

  • to provide you with helpful compliance or regulatory solutions;
  • to provide you with training and compliance services in a variety of areas;
  • to conduct our business;
  • to comply with our legal obligations; and
  • to help us manage and enhance our services.

How might we use and disclose personal information?

13.12 When we refer to “use” of personal information, we mean use within HNLaw, for the purposes outlined above. When we use the word “disclose”, we mean providing the information to persons outside HNLaw.

13.13 We may use and disclose personal information for the primary purposes for which it is collected, for reasonably expected secondary purposes which are related to the primary purpose and in other circumstances authorised by the Privacy Act.  Sensitive information will be used and disclosed only for the purpose for which it was provided or a directly related secondary purpose, unless the individual agrees otherwise, or where certain other limited circumstances apply (e.g. where required by law).

13.14 We use and disclose personal information for the following purposes:

  • to provide you with helpful compliance or regulatory solutions;
  • to provide you with training and compliance services in a variety of areas;
  • to conduct our business;
  • to comply with our legal obligations; and
  • to help us manage and enhance our services.

13.15 We do not disclose personal information we collect to others for the purpose of allowing them to direct market their products and services. We do not use or disclose sensitive information for direct marketing purposes.

13.16 We occasionally engage other people to perform services for us, which may involve that person handling personal information we hold.  In these situations, we prohibit that person from using personal information about you except for the specific purpose for which we supply it.

13.17 In relation to sensitive information held by us, wherever possible, we will attempt to de-identify the information.  We also undertake to delete all personal information about an individual when it is no longer needed or relevant.

To whom might we disclose personal information?

13.18 We may disclose personal information to:

  • a Court or Tribunal, if required;
  • consultants we engage;
  • organisations involved in a transfer or sale of all or part of our assets or business (including accounts and trade receivables);
  • organisations involved in managing our funding functions;
  • regulatory authorities, if required by law; and
  • anyone else to whom the individual authorises us to disclose it.

13.19 We also collect personal information from these organisations and individuals, and deal with that information in accordance with this Policy.

Sending information overseas:

13.20 We will not send personal information to recipients outside of Australia without:

  • obtaining your consent (in some cases this consent will be implied); or
  • otherwise complying with the NPPs.

Management of personal information

13.21 The NPPs require us to take all reasonable steps to protect the security of personal information.  In our dealings with you, our personnel must respect the confidentiality of information and the privacy of individuals.

13.22 We take reasonable steps to protect personal information held from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure, for example by use of physical security and restricted access to electronic records.  All personal information contained in hard copy documents held by us is stored in cabinets in a secure location.  All personal information stored on our computer system is backed up daily and monthly and back-up copies are held in a secure location.

13.23 Where we no longer require the personal information for a permitted purpose under the NPPs, we will take reasonable steps to destroy it.

Identifiers

13.24 We will not use identifiers assigned by the Government, such as a tax file number, Medicare number or provider number, for our own file recording purposes.

How do we keep personal information accurate and up-to-date?

13.25 We have taken, and will continue to take, reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date.  We encourage you to contact us in order to update any personal information we hold about you.

You have the ability to gain access to your personal information

13.26 Subject to the exceptions set out in the Privacy Act, you may gain access to the personal information which we hold about you by contacting us.  If we refuse to provide the information, we will provide reasons for the refusal and inform you of any exceptions relied upon under the Privacy Act.

13.27 Your request for access to your personal information will be dealt with by allowing you to look at your personal information at our offices.  We will require identity verification and specification of what information is required.  An administrative fee for search and photocopying costs may be charged for providing access.  We will advise the likely cost in advance whenever practicable.

Contact us

13.28 If you have any questions about these Terms, or privacy related issues in respect of your dealings with us, please contact us by email at law@hnlaw.com.au.

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