Joint Submission: FECCA and the Collaborative - Remaking the My Health Records (Information Commissioner Enforcement Powers) Guidelines 2026

The FECCA and the Collaborative welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Exposure Draft of the My Health Records (Information Commissioner Enforcement Powers) Guidelines 2026 and the accompanying Consultation Paper. We support the overall intent of the Guidelines. Strong, transparent and proportionate enforcement of privacy obligations is essential to maintaining public trust in My Health Record and, by extension, to the success of Australia’s digital health system.

However, from a multicultural health perspective, we are concerned that the Exposure Draft and Consultation Paper remain largely regulator-facing and legally framed, with limited consideration of how enforcement processes are understood, accessed and experienced by multicultural communities.

Trust, agency and accessibility are not abstract principles for multicultural communities. They are practical determinants of whether people opt in to digital systems, whether they exercise their rights, and whether privacy protections are meaningful in real-world settings.