Privacy
We collect three things and publish none of them individually. This page explains exactly what happens to them.
Your view is sensitive information
Under Australian privacy law, a political opinion is a special category called sensitive information. A view on whether a rail station should be built is a political opinion. This is true under both the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth) and the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Victoria).
Because of that, we ask for your express consent in a separate checkbox rather than burying it in terms and conditions, and we record the date and the exact wording you agreed to. If we change the wording, we record a new version rather than quietly applying it to people who agreed to something else.
I consent to We Love Wyndham collecting and publishing, in aggregated and de-identified form, my recorded view on this project. I understand that a view on a local advocacy project is "sensitive information" under Australian privacy law, that my suburb will be published only as part of a group of five or more people, and that I can withdraw at any time.
What we collect
We collect
- Your email address
- Your suburb
- Your view on this project
We do not collect
- Your name
- Your date of birth
- Your gender
- Your street or street address
- Your location or any map coordinates
The right-hand list matters more than the left. We do not ask for your street or your address because street-level data about political views can be matched back to an individual dwelling, and in Wyndham’s low-density areas — Werribee South, Little River, the rural west — that is not theoretical. The safest way to hold data you cannot leak is not to collect it.
How we publish it
- Your suburb is published only as part of a group of five or more people. Below that, the suburb shows as “not enough responses” with no number at all.
- If hiding one suburb would let you work out its number by subtracting the others from the total, we hide a second one too.
- Our public data contains grouped counts only. There is no part of this site, and no request anyone can make of it, that returns one person’s answer.
How long we keep it
Raw responses will be deleted 12 months after a project closes, leaving only the grouped counts. The deletion is a scheduled job in the database rather than a promise in a document, because a retention policy nobody runs is not a policy.
Being exact about where this stands: the job is written and scheduled, but it only acts on projects that have been marked closed, and nothing has closed yet. So no deletion has run, and none is due. We would rather tell you that than let you assume a cleanup is happening that is not.
Leaving
Withdrawing removes your membership and every response you have given, and reduces the published totals accordingly. We do not keep a copy for our records.
Again, exactly where this stands: the deletion itself is built and tested, but the page that lets you trigger it yourself is not. Until that page exists this site is not collecting anything from real residents — which is why the membership form carries a warning not to use a real email address. A one-click way to leave ships before this site asks anyone for anything real.
What we have not settled yet
Being straight with you: whether the Commonwealth Act or the Victorian Act binds this site depends on who formally operates it, and that is not yet decided. Rather than pick whichever is more convenient, we are building to the stricter reading of both. We are also having the consent wording above reviewed by a lawyer before this site collects anything from a real resident.
There are exemptions we could probably claim — one for small organisations, one for political activity. We are not claiming them. “We are technically exempt” is not something you should have to accept from a site asking for your political views.