Why your personal information is being collected
Service NSW is collecting your personal information to assess your application for a hardship review in relation to a debt or compliance audit for a grant, rebate or voucher payment you have received. For more information about how Service NSW manages hardship reviews, please refer to the Consideration of hardship webpage. In some situations, if sufficient evidence demonstrating hardship is provided, a debt may be waived.
Type of personal information we collect
To assess your hardship claim, we may request documentation and evidence to support your circumstances. For examples of eligible hardship criteria, visit the Consideration of hardship webpage.
You may be asked to provide supporting documents from:
- government services that support the community
- community organisations such as charities, neighbourhood centres, or support services
- health professionals
- accredited financial counsellors who have assessed your situation.
Service NSW does not require you to disclose your Tax File Number (TFN) for the purposes of the hardship review. 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 another individual in your application you must obtain authorisation from that person to disclose their personal information to Service NSW for the purpose of this hardship review. We recommend a copy of this Privacy Notice be provided to any individual that has been included in your application.
How we will use and disclose this information
Service NSW will use personal information for the primary purpose that it was collected for, or a directly related secondary purpose. This includes to:
- assess your eligibility for hardship consideration
- investigate any allegation or suspicion of fraud
- If 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.
If your debt has been referred to Revenue NSW, we’ll let them know that your application is under review along with the outcome of our review once completed.
We may also disclose your personal information to:
- 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.
Service NSW may also disclose your personal information to conduct audit and compliance activities in relation to hardship claims. This may include disclosing personal information to:
- 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.
- 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 may not be able to consider your application for hardship review.
More information
Read the Service NSW privacy statement for more information on how:
- we handle your personal information
- you can access and seek correction of your information
- privacy enquiries or complaints can be made.
You can call Service NSW on 13 77 88.
Service NSW is located at 2–24 Rawson Place Sydney NSW 2000.