THE HON MARK DREYFUS QC MP
Attorney-General
Minister for Emergency Management
Special Minister of State
Minister for the Public Service and Integrity
MEDIA RELEASE
COMMISSIONER APPOINTED FOR PRIVACY INQUIRY
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus QC has appointed Professor Barbara McDonald to head the Australian Law Reform Commission's inquiry into Serious Invasions of Privacy in the Digital Era.
Professor McDonald is a Professor of Law at the University of Sydney and will look at whether there should be a right to sue for breach of privacy.
Professor McDonald's extensive experience and significant knowledge in these areas will greatly assist the Commission to undertake the inquiry, Mr Dreyfus said.
Changing conceptions of community privacy, as well as rapid growth in information technology capabilities, mean issues surrounding privacy must be discussed this enquiry will do just that.
A brief biography of Professor McDonald follows.
Further information about the Australian Law Reform Commission, including the terms of reference, is available at www.alrc.gov.au.
TUESDAY, 30 JULY 2013
Professor Barbara McDonald
Professor McDonald is a Professor of Law at the University of Sydney, where she has been a member of the full-time faculty since 1990. Before becoming an academic she practised in commercial litigation at Freehill, Hollingdale and Page, now Herbert Smith Freehills, with whom she has been a consultant since 2000.
Professor McDonald has comprehensive academic experience in tort law, equity, remedies and media law, and has published widely in these areas, including, recently, many articles on the impact of tort reforms and the developing law of privacy. She is a member of the editorial board of the Torts Law Journal. She is a co-author of Celebrity and the Law, published in 2010, with primary authorship of the chapters on defamation and privacy, and a contributing author to Fleming's Law of Torts.
