Labor to appoint dedicated privacy commissioner to combat data breaches

The expansion of the OAIC comes in the wake of the mass data breaches at Medibank and Optus. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

The federal government will appoint a dedicated privacy commissioner to deal with the increasing threat of data breaches, the attorney general has announced.

Mark Dreyfus revealed late on Tuesday evening that the Albanese government would also restore the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to a three-commissioner structure, saying the appointments were necessary to deal with “the growing threats to data security and the increasing volume and complexity of privacy issues”.