Omnifys builds and operates AI agents for Australian organizations, supporting clients in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide through our Australia and Asia Pacific desks. Strategy, build, integration and monitoring are handled end to end.
There is a real deadline in December 2026
This is the most concrete AI obligation facing Australian businesses right now, and it is close. From 10 December 2026, APP entities must disclose in their privacy policies the types of personal information used in substantially automated decisions, the nature of decisions made solely or significantly by a computer program, and where those decisions could reasonably be expected to significantly affect an individual's rights or interests.
If you deploy an agent that scores, ranks, triages, approves or declines anything involving a person, that disclosure requirement will apply to you. It is not onerous, but it does require knowing precisely what your systems do with personal information — which many organizations discover they cannot articulate until they try to write it down.
The wider regulatory picture
Australia chose not to introduce a standalone AI Act. The National AI Plan of December 2025 confirmed the country will rely on existing laws and sector regulators, supported by voluntary guidance and the Australian AI Safety Institute. The ten mandatory guardrails for high-risk AI proposed in September 2024 were not carried forward. A second tranche of Privacy Act reforms is progressing — potentially removing the small business and employee records exemptions and introducing a fair and reasonable test — but the timing remains uncertain.
The practical reading: your obligations come from the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, from consumer law, and from your sector regulator — APRA CPS 234 if you are in financial services, for instance. Not from an AI-specific statute.
What we do about it
- An automated decision-making register for every agent, written in language that can go straight into your privacy policy ahead of the December 2026 deadline.
- APP-aligned handling of personal information, including notification, access and correction paths.
- Notifiable Data Breach runbooks with assessment timelines built in.
- Human review checkpoints on any decision that significantly affects an individual.
- Essential Eight-aligned security controls where your risk posture calls for them.
Commercial details
Quoted and invoiced in Australian dollars. SaaS tools from the AUD equivalent of USD 39–99 per month, managed agents from USD 500–2,000 per month after a paid pilot, custom builds from USD 5,000 — converted at prevailing rates and fixed for the contract term. Support runs on AEST/AEDT business hours through our Australia desk.
Common questions
What exactly changes on 10 December 2026?
APP entities must disclose in their privacy policy the kinds of personal information used in substantially automated decisions, the nature of those decisions, and where a decision could significantly affect someone's rights or interests. It is a transparency obligation rather than a restriction on using automation, but it requires knowing precisely what your systems do.
Does Australia have an AI Act we need to comply with?
No. The December 2025 National AI Plan confirmed Australia will regulate AI through existing laws and sector regulators rather than a standalone statute, supported by voluntary guidance and the Australian AI Safety Institute. The mandatory guardrails proposed in 2024 were not carried forward.
Does the small business exemption still cover us?
For now, but do not build a strategy on it. Removing the small business and employee records exemptions is explicitly on the table in the second tranche of Privacy Act reforms. We design deployments that would survive that change rather than ones that depend on the exemption surviving.
Do you have an Australian office?
We operate an Australia desk reachable at au@omnifys.com and an Asia Pacific desk at apac@omnifys.com, with support on Australian business hours. Omnifys is registered in Canada; we do not currently maintain a registered Australian entity, and we would rather tell you that plainly than imply otherwise.
Talk to us
Book a free consultation and we will map one workflow end to end, tell you honestly whether an agent is the right answer, and quote it in your local currency. Get in touch.
Regulatory summaries on this page were reviewed in July 2026 and are provided for general information only. They are not legal advice. Privacy and AI law is changing quickly in all three markets — confirm your own position with qualified counsel.