Privacy policy.
Privacy Policy
Effective Date: 1 May 2025
1. Introduction
Agricultural Business Research Institute ("we," "our," or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your personal information.
2. Personal information
Personal information is information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.
3. Personal information we collect and hold
The types of personal information we collect will depend on the nature of your interactions with us and the type of product or service you chose to receive from us.
The personal information we may collect includes:
Your name, contact details (address, email, phone number), and date of birth
Employment and professional details such as your occupation, education, qualifications, and work history
Your Australian Business Number (ABN) and other relevant business identifiers
Financial and transaction information, including credit card or bank details when purchasing from us
Login credentials and system usage data (e.g. IP address, browser type, access logs)
Communications with us, such as support requests, survey responses, or feedback
Any other personal information you voluntarily provide during interactions with our services, events, or support channels
You do not have to provide us with personal information when seeking our products or services, or otherwise interacting with us. However, if we are unable to collect certain information about you, we may be unable to provide you with the products, services or assistance you are requesting.
4. How we collect personal information
We collect personal information in a variety of ways, including directly from you through meetings, correspondence, telephone calls, messaging platforms, and other in-person interactions. We also collect information via digital channels such as our website, applications, social media, cookies, and tracking technologies. In addition, we may collect information from publicly available sources, third-party providers, integration partners, media, and other publications.
We collect personal information throughout the information lifecycle — either on an ad hoc or recurring basis — including, for example, when you acquire a product or service from us, engage with our support team, participate in feedback activities, or when changes are made to the services you use.
We may also combine or link personal information already held with other information collected, to better understand your needs and improve our services.
5. Third parties
We will collect personal information from you only, where it is reasonable and practicable to do so. However, in some circumstances we may be provided with information by third parties. In such a case, we will take reasonable steps to ensure you are made aware of the personal information provided to us.
6. Anonymity
You can interact with us anonymously or by using a pseudonym where reasonably possible, unless we are required or authorised to identify you or it is impractical to interact with you anonymously or by pseudonym.
7. Why personal information is collected, held, used and disclosed
We collect your personal information for the primary purpose of providing our services to you, managing our relationship with you, conducting research, providing you with information and responding to your queries, and for our own marketing purposes.
We may also use your personal information for secondary purposes closely related to the primary purpose, in circumstances where you would reasonably expect such use or disclosure including for marketing.
You may unsubscribe from our mailing and marketing lists at any time by contacting us in writing.
8. Single Sign-On (SSO)
We offer SSO services that allow you to log into our website using your credentials from certain third-party services, such as Microsoft and Facebook. When you use these services to log in, we may collect certain information from your third-party account, such as your name and email address, to authenticate you. We use this information solely for authentication purposes and to provide you with a seamless login experience.
9. Disclosing personal information
Your personal information may be disclosed in a number of circumstances, including the following:
external service providers so that they can provide a service we have contracted out or wish to contract out to them;
third parties where you consent to the use or disclosure;
where required or authorised by law.
Where we have conducted research, we will report the results of our research without identifying you unless you have expressly consented to be identified.
We may also disclose personal information to overseas recipients, where:
our data is stored or processed using cloud-based platforms or software hosted in jurisdictions such as the United States, Singapore, Ireland, or other countries where our service providers operate;
we work with international collaborators, consultants or partners to deliver services or conduct research; or
required for compliance with international standards or legal obligations.
We take reasonable steps to ensure any overseas recipients handle your information in accordance with applicable privacy principles.
10. Security of personal information
We store your personal information in computer systems, electronic databases, digital recordings, and hard copy files. We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure.
Our security measures include:
Limiting physical access to our premises
Restricting access to personal information based on role and business need
Implementing secure login protocols, firewalls, encryption, and other technology-based safeguards
Maintaining up-to-date antivirus and security monitoring tools
Regularly reviewing user access and permissions
Conducting staff training on information security and privacy obligations
Destroying or permanently de-identifying personal information when it is no longer required
Where third-party service providers are used (such as cloud hosting, communication tools, or data processing platforms), we take reasonable steps to ensure those providers also apply appropriate security safeguards.
When your personal information is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify it. However, if the information forms part of our business records (e.g. customer files), we may retain it for at least seven years, or as required by law.
11. Access to and correction of personal information
We take reasonable steps to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up-to-date. You can request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you, including any inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading personal information.
If you would like to request access to or correction of the personal information we hold about you please contact us (our contact details are at the end of this Privacy Policy) as we may be able to provide you with this personal information in accordance with our normal business processes. If we cannot provide your personal information using our standard business processes we can commence the privacy access request process for you which may require you to complete a request form.
There is no charge for requesting access to or correction of your personal information, however we may charge you a reasonable amount to cover matters such as retrieving, copying and sending out your personal information.
We will respond to your requests to access or correct your personal information in a reasonable time. Our response to your request will usually be completed within 30 days of our receipt of your request. If we require further time, we will contact you in writing and let you know and provide reasons for why the further time is required.
There are some instances where we are not required to give you access to your personal information and there may be some circumstances where we may not agree that the personal information we hold about you needs updating or correcting. In these instances, we will contact you in writing with the reasons why access to or updating of your personal information is not proceeding.
You may ask that we include a statement with your personal information stating that you believe the personal information is inaccurate, out-of-date or incomplete.
12. Sensitive information
Sensitive information includes information or an opinion about such things as a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious or philosophical beliefs, membership of a trade union or other professional body, criminal record, health information, or biometric data.
In the course of our business we may collect and hold sensitive information which may include: criminal records, health information and memberships in professional associations.
If you provide us with sensitive information it will only be used by us:
for the primary purpose for which it was obtained;
for a secondary purpose that is directly related to the primary purpose;
with your consent, or where required or authorised by law.
13. Cookies
A cookie is a small text file placed on your computer by our webpage server, and which can later be retrieved by our webpage services. Cookies are frequently used on websites.
We use cookies in a limited manner when you visit our website for the purpose of providing you with a better and more customised service. Cookies are not used by us to collect and store your personal information.
You can choose if and how a cookie will be accepted by configuring your preferences and options in your internet browser.
We use cookies for different purposes such as:
to allocate a unique number to your internet browser;
to customise our website for you;
for security purposes;
for statistical purposes; and
to authenticate or identify whether you are registered on our website, without requiring you to re-enter details each time you log on to our website.
If at any time you do not wish to accept cookies or wish to delete existing cookies, you may manually configure your browser to refuse cookies or may manually delete existing cookies from your hard drive. However, by deleting or refusing to accept cookies you may frustrate or hinder your access to or use of areas of our website.
14. IP address
Your IP address is the identifier for your computer when you are using the internet. It may be necessary for us to collect your IP address for your interacting with various parts of our website.
15. Logging, Monitoring and Analytics
We may collect information about how you use our website and systems for the purposes of monitoring performance, diagnosing issues, enhancing functionality, ensuring security, and improving the user experience. This includes logging certain actions and access events (e.g. logins, page views, error messages, and other system events).
We may use web analytics tools (such as Google Analytics or similar platforms) to help us understand traffic patterns and user behaviour on our website and applications. These tools may collect information including your device type, operating system, browser type, pages visited, and time spent on our website.
Where possible, information collected for monitoring and analytics is de-identified or aggregated. If personal information is collected through these tools or logs, it will be handled in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
You can opt out of certain analytics tracking by configuring your browser settings or using tools provided by the analytics providers.
16. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this website. By continuing to deal with us, you accept this Privacy Policy as it applies from time to time.
17. Obtaining a copy of the Privacy Policy
Please contact us if you would like a copy of this Privacy Policy.
18. Contacting us
If you have questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, or a complaint about how we have handled your personal information please contact us at:
ABRI
UNE, The Short Run
Armidale, NSW, 2351 Australia
Tel: +61 2 6773 3555.
email: office@abri.une.edu.au
If you are dissatisfied with our response you may make a compliant to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner who can be contacted on 1300 363 992 or at www.oaic.gov.au