Alec Christie, DLA Piper intellectual property and technology partner at in Sydney. AT least half of corporate Australia will not be compliant with new privacy laws when they come into effect in March next year, according to a legal expert. DLA Piper intellectual property and technology partner Alec Christie said there was little understanding of what businesses had to change in order to be compliant. "My feel is 50 to 60 per cent of corporate Australia will not be compliant by March 12 and either it is a hangover from not taking the previous law that seriously, because there weren't penalties and fines, or it is just not on their to-do list," he said. The new privacy laws apply to all businesses that turnover more than $3 million a year and which collect personal data. This includes many online retailers and tech start-ups as well as large corporations and all federal government departments and agencies. From March 12, the same set of rules, the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), will apply to both businesses and federal government. "It is certainly of most import online because we do so much online, but it is applicable to everything so good old-fashioned businesses that collect forms in hard copy it applies to them as well," Mr Christie said. Under the new laws, agencies and companies can be fined $1.7 million and individuals $340,000 for serious or repeated invasions of privacy. I think a lot of corporate Australia is just missing the point that this is not just a change to the wording but it is a complete change in the attitude. Currently, if company X collected personal information from a consumer and wanted to share it with company Y the only obligation on company X was to state in its privacy policy that it would share the information with a third party. The new laws mean the obligation also falls on company Y to contact the consumer and let them know how they plan to use their data. "That is a consequence which has possibly catastrophic knock-on circumstances," Mr Christie said. Organisations must have an up to date privacy policy and train their staff on it and privacy compliance. Mr Christie said organisations needed to undertake a "mini privacy audit." "They need to look at what they collect, how they collect it, what purposes they use it for, how long they keep it and then map that against the APPs," he said. I think most of them will find at least one of those scenarios is contrary to what their obligations are. He said the privacy law changes would reinvigorate consumer interest in privacy.