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Attorney General Mark Speakman has announced the proposed appointment of Samantha Gavel as NSW Privacy Commissioner. T he Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Ombudsman, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission and the Crime Commission gets  to confirm the appointment... or otherwise. And the good news, many years late, is that the government will make the position full time.  The Commissioner has  been part-time since the first appointment in 1999  and for long periods there was an Acting Commissioner, including 2003-07 and 2009-2011.  “Ms Gavel is a leader in privacy protection who is currently the National Health Practitioner Ombudsman and Privacy Commissioner, and was previously the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman for six years,” Mr Speakman said in a Media release  Paris Cowan in IT News in February recounted how privacy regulation everywhere around the country is under resourced. Budgeted expenditure for the Information and Privacy Commission in 2017-18 is $5.6 million, a 1.3%

 Professor David Ben-Tovim , Flinders University The recent jailing of British breast surgeon Ian Paterson after performing multiple unnecessary operations has highlighted the issue of hospital safety. Paterson’s unnecessary surgeries included some performed in private hospitals, which prompted UK doctors to call for private hospitals to report similar patient safety data as public hospitals, including unexpected deaths and serious injuries. This example shows how little we know about patient safety and quality in our private hospitals, not only in the UK, but also in Australia. What do we know about hospital safety and quality? In Australia, one of the best places to look for information on hospital safety and quality is the MyHospitals website, a commonwealth department site run by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare . The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare is provided with data about every patient treated in an Australian hospital, both public and priva