Version 1.0, effective 23 October 2026.
Who we are
Smart Metering Australia ("Smart Metering", "we", "us") is the Australian arm of the Smart Metering Group, headquartered in New Zealand. We install and operate sub-meters in apartment buildings and commercial sites, read them remotely, and, depending on the building, bill residents for their usage on behalf of, or in place of, the owners corporation.
We manage personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
The information we collect
- Residents, lot owners and tenants: name, lot and street address, phone, email, account number, move-in and move-out dates, billing and payment history, correspondence and complaints.
- Payment details: card payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store full card numbers; our billing platform keeps only a token. If you pay by direct debit, we hold the bank account details you give us for that purpose.
- Meter data: meter serial number, readings (taken up to twice a day for apartments), consumption, alarms such as leaks, reverse flow or tampering, and valve status where a valve is fitted.
- Building contacts: names, roles and contact details of committee members, strata managers, building managers and property managers, including the name, email and phone of anyone given access to our metering platform.
- Contractors and suppliers: contact, insurance and licence details.
- Website visitors: what you enter in our forms, plus technical data such as IP address, browser and pages visited (see "Our website" below).
We do not ask for sensitive information such as health details. If you choose to tell us about your health or personal circumstances, for example to support a hardship request, we use it only for that purpose and with your consent.
How we collect it
- From you, when you open an account, contact us, pay a bill or use our portal.
- From your owners corporation, strata manager, building manager, property manager or landlord, who give us lot and contact details so we can set up billing.
- From your water utility or energy distributor, where the building has authorised it.
- Automatically, from the meters and gateways installed in your building.
- From our installers, during installation and maintenance visits.
- From our website, through forms, cookies and similar technologies.
If we receive your details from someone else, we tell you so when we first contact you.
How we use it
- To set up and manage your account, read meters and calculate bills.
- To detect leaks and faults and tell you or your building.
- To collect payments and follow up overdue amounts.
- To answer questions and resolve complaints.
- To install, maintain and access our equipment.
- To report usage to your building where our agreement with the building requires it.
- To improve our services and our website, using de-identified data where we can.
- To meet our legal obligations and protect our legal rights.
We do not sell personal information. We do not use your consumption data for advertising or give it to anyone for their marketing.
Automated decisions
Our billing system uses meter readings and account details to calculate bills. Leak and fault alarms come to our team, not straight to residents, so a person decides what to do. Only our finance team can close a valve on a hot water meter, and the system never does this on its own. You can ask us to have a person review any decision about your account.
Who we share it with
- Your owners corporation or building, to the extent our agreement with them requires.
- Smart Metering Limited (New Zealand), which provides billing, payment reconciliation, customer support and engineering for us.
- Service providers acting for us: our billing platform (Utilmate), our card payment processor (Stripe), our bank, our customer relationship management system (Capsule), cloud email and document storage (Google Workspace), email delivery (Resend), website hosting and security (Cloudflare), website analytics and advertising (Google), mail and printing, installers and plumbers, debt collection agencies, and our professional advisers.
- Water utilities and energy distributors, where needed to manage the building's account.
- Regulators, ombudsmen, courts and law enforcement, where the law requires or allows it.
- A buyer of all or part of our business, under confidentiality terms.
We require service providers to protect your information and use it only to provide services to us.
We do not currently obtain credit reports about you or disclose information about you to credit reporting bodies. We will update this policy before that changes.
Overseas disclosure
Our metering platform and the network server that collects meter readings are both hosted in a Sydney data centre, and payments are processed in Australia. Some other information is stored or accessed outside Australia: in New Zealand, where our parent company reconciles payments and supports customers, and in the United States and other countries where our service providers, including our customer relationship management provider and Google, store data. Before we send information overseas we take reasonable steps, usually through contract terms, to make sure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.
How we store and protect it
We hold information in secure cloud systems, with access limited to staff and contractors who need it. We keep account records for as long as we need them to provide our services and to meet our tax and legal record-keeping obligations, then delete or de-identify them.
If a data breach is likely to cause serious harm, we notify the people affected and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
Accessing and correcting your information
You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it. Email [email protected]. We will confirm your identity and usually respond within 30 days. Corrections are free, and access is free in most cases. If we refuse a request, we will explain why in writing.
Dealing with us anonymously
You can make a general enquiry without giving your name. We cannot open or bill an account anonymously.
Marketing
We send marketing emails only to people who ask for them, for example by ticking the newsletter box on our contact form, and to business contacts such as building managers and committee members. Every message has an unsubscribe link, and you can opt out at any time.
Our website
Our website is hosted on Cloudflare, which logs technical data to keep the site secure and fast. It also uses cookies and similar technologies from Google:
- Google Analytics helps us understand how the website is used, such as the pages visited, time on site, the type of device and browser, and an approximate location worked out from your IP address.
- Google Ads conversion tracking tells us when someone who clicked one of our ads goes on to send us an enquiry, so we can see which ads are useful. We do not send your name, email address, phone number or message to Google.
- Remarketing. We may use Google Ads to show our ads to people who have visited our website, when they later use Google Search or visit other websites. Google and other third-party vendors use cookies to show these ads based on your past visits to our website.
Google may process this information in the United States and other countries. You can read how Google uses information from websites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
You can turn off personalised ads from Google in My Ad Center, stop Google Analytics collecting data about you with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Some website features may not work if cookies are disabled.
Complaints
If you think we have mishandled your information, email [email protected]. We will acknowledge your complaint promptly and aim to resolve it within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the OAIC at oaic.gov.au.
Changes to this policy
We update this policy when our practices change, and record each change in the version history below. If a change materially affects account holders, we will tell them by email.
Contact us
Privacy enquiries: Smart Metering Australia, email [email protected].
Version history
- Version 1.0, 23 October 2026: first Australian privacy policy.