中文The Visual Media Association (VMA) is calling on the Federal Government to take a proportionate approach to proposed privacy reforms that, as currently drafted, may significantly impact printed mail volumes across Australia. At the center of the concern is the Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026, which would alter how Australian businesses handle data for physical direct marketing.
Until now, when digital data tracking faced tougher regulation, print often benefited, as organizations pivoted back to catalogs, flyers and addressed promotional mail. The new legislation changes that dynamic by heavily regulating the entire lifecycle of the data used by charities and similar bodies to print and distribute mail, not just digital data. That exposes a channel many assumed would remain a safe haven from privacy scrutiny.
The Bill proposes stricter rules for direct marketing and a shift from opt-out to opt-in standards. It would ban the sale or rental of physical address lists and make it much harder for charities and organizations to send unsolicited mail to people with whom they have no existing relationship. It also broadens the definition of personal information to any data relating to an individual, not just data about them, so purchasing history could no longer be used to build marketing lists. Finally, it demands that organizations destroy data when it is no longer actively required, shrinking databases and, with them, the audiences for printed communication.
Kellie Northwood, CEO of the VMA, said the proposed reforms are the latest issue facing an industry already responding to significant regulatory and competitive pressures, in contrast to overseas competitors who face comparatively little business regulation. Regulation, she argued, must be proportionate to the activity and risk being addressed, and the association supports protecting Australians and their personal information, but not regulation developed in isolation from commercial realities.
The downstream effects are structural. Charitable fundraising supports important community outcomes, but it also sustains an extensive Australian supply chain. Paper, print, mail, data, logistics and distribution businesses employ Australians and manufacture locally. When regulation makes legitimate activity unnecessarily difficult or expensive, those impacts travel directly through that supply chain. The paper, print, mail, packaging and visual media sectors collectively support approximately 230,000 Australian workers across metropolitan and regional communities.
The VMA, with the support of the Australasian Paper and Packaging Industry Association (APPIA), has written to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland supporting concerns raised by the Fundraising Institute Australasia (FIA). It is also working with associations across sectors with common interests to ensure the broader economic consequences of regulatory reform are understood, particularly where charitable fundraising, direct mail and Australian manufacturing supply chains intersect.
Northwood also pointed to the VMA’s campaign against Australian taxpayer-funded print production being sent offshore, estimating more than AUD 130 million in government-related print work is currently produced outside Australia. She argued it is difficult to reconcile policies aimed at strengthening sovereign manufacturing with settings that make it more expensive to manufacture locally while Australian work is purchased offshore.
The VMA supports FIA’s call for a framework that recognizes the public-benefit purpose of charitable fundraising while maintaining appropriate safeguards for personal information. The association’s ask is straightforward: protect privacy, protect consumers, but also understand the industries affected and work with their peak bodies before unintended consequences become lost Australian production and lost Australian jobs.
The numbers behind the VMA’s argument are substantial. The paper, print, mail, packaging and visual media sectors collectively support roughly 230,000 Australian workers, and the association estimates more than AUD 130 million in government-related print work is already produced offshore, a figure it cites to show the cumulative effect of policy settings that quietly disadvantage local manufacture. The privacy Bill is presented not as a single threat but as the latest in a stack of reforms, from fibre-based substrate rules to packaging and recycling obligations, each of which adds cost and complexity to domestic producers competing against offshore rivals under lighter regimes.
The VMA’s strategy is deliberately multilateral. Rather than lobbying alone, it has aligned with APPIA and echoed the concerns of the Fundraising Institute Australasia, broadening the coalition that speaks to the Attorney-General. The underlying ask is not that privacy be abandoned but that regulation be assessed against stated national priorities such as sovereign manufacturing and economic resilience, so that the cumulative burden on Australian producers is weighed before it becomes irreversible.
Northwood was blunt about the cumulative effect of overlapping reforms. Print and mail are not isolated activities but part of a supply chain that includes paper manufacturing, logistics, data and distribution, all employing Australians in regional as well as metropolitan areas. When one regulation raises cost or complexity, the impact ripples outward, and the combination of fibre, packaging, environmental, mail and privacy reforms landing together creates a burden that none, individually, might have triggered. The VMA’s message to policymakers is that each new layer should be tested against its real-world cost to domestic capability before it is enacted, a principle it argues should apply across the board.
Source: Print21 (https://print21.com.au/vma-fighting-charity-mail-threat/)
