This privacy collection notice relates to the Personal Hardship Assistance, Tropical Cyclone Alfred, March 2025 grant.
Service NSW on behalf of the NSW Reconstruction Authority are delivering emergency financial assistance support (the Grant) to households impacted by Tropical Cyclone Alfred. Individuals that were impacted by prolonged power outages or evacuation orders in the Local Government Areas of Ballina, Bellingen, Byron, Clarence Valley, Coffs Harbour, Dungog, Kempsey, Kyogle, Lismore, Lord Howe Island, MidCoast, Nambucca Valley, Port Macquarie-Hastings, Richmond Valley and Tweed are eligible to apply.
Why your personal information is being collected
Service NSW is collecting your personal information to:
- process your application and determine your eligibility for the Grant
- provide you with further information about the Grant
- pay the Grant to eligible residents, and
- other directly related purposes.
Types of personal information collected
Service NSW collects the following personal information:
- full name
- date of birth
- information from proof of identity document/s
- contact number and email address
- residential address
- evidence that you resided at an address located in the impacted area
- bank details.
Service NSW does not require you to disclose your Tax File Number (TFN) for the purposes of the Grant. If you submit any evidence to us that includes your TFN, you should remove or obscure TFN where possible. If you are not able to remove or obscure your TFN, we are required to protect this information and not use it for any purpose.
If you have provided information about an individual in your eligible household you must obtain authorisation from that person to disclose their personal information to Service NSW for the purpose of the Grant. You must also inform those individuals that Service NSW will check their Medicare information with the Document Verification Service (DVS).
We recommend a copy of this Privacy Notice be provided to any individual that has been included in your application.
How your information will be used and disclosed
Service NSW will use personal information for the primary purpose that it was collected for, or a directly related secondary purpose. This includes to:
- contact you about your application, including to confirm the information in your application or to request additional information
- process a payment to the nominated bank account
- contact you to invite you to participate in voluntary evaluation of the Grant
- identify future state or Commonwealth government financial support grants or assistance programs that you may be eligible for in the impacted area
- contact you about future supports you may be eligible for in the impacted area
- collect, maintain and use information about you for our internal administrative purposes, including for the purpose of our interactions with you
- conduct audit, investigation or compliance activities to assess whether the eligibility criteria and Terms and Conditions have been and are being met, and
- investigate any allegation of fraud or a failure to comply with the Terms and Conditions and to assess the financial integrity of the Grant.
If you fail to comply with the Terms and Conditions or we reasonably suspect fraud or other criminal activity has occurred, then Service NSW may use relevant information from your application to prevent, detect and investigate fraud in programs or grants administered by Service NSW.
We may disclose the information in your application to:
- Revenue NSW or our contracted service providers to assist Service NSW with processing your application and determining your eligibility for the Grant.
- NSW Reconstruction Authority and their contracted service providers to:
- identify future state or Commonwealth government financial support grants or assistance programs that you may be eligible for in the impacted area
- contact you about future supports in the impacted area
- report and evaluate the Grant, including when required under NSW Treasury’s Evaluation Policy and Guidelines
- to seek reimbursement funding from the Commonwealth, and
- for other purposes that are directly related to this disaster or other disasters in your region.
- NSW Treasury and their contracted service providers for the purposes of reporting on and evaluating the Grant when required under NSW Treasury’s Evaluation Policy and Guidelines.
- the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs to verify your proof of identity information with the Document Verification Service (DVS)
- Westpac for the purposes of administering the funds to your nominated bank account, and
- the Department of Customer Service for the purposes of de-identifying and aggregating Grant information to analyse and report on the Program. Any report or publications on the evaluation of the Program will not identify any individual that has registered or participated in the Program.
Service NSW and the NSW Reconstruction Authority may also disclose personal information to conduct audit, investigation and compliance activities or to ensure the financial integrity of the Grant. This includes to:
- the issuer of any document you provide as evidence in your application for the purpose of confirming the accuracy of the information with the issuer
- NSW Police, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and other law enforcement agencies, if Service NSW reasonably suspects a case of fraud or other criminal activity
- Revenue NSW if Service NSW has reasons to believe a contravention of Grant conditions has taken place, or so that payments may be recovered, and
- the Australian Transactions Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), if Service NSW reasonably suspects a case of fraud or other financial crime, or has conducted an investigation in response to information provided by AUSTRAC and is sharing the results of that investigation with AUSTRAC.
Service NSW will not disclose your personal information to anyone else unless you provide your consent, or we are required or authorised to do so by law.
Whether you are required by law to provide us with this information
Providing us with the requested information is not required by law. However, if you choose not to provide us with the requested information we will not be able to process your application.