The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner concluded consultation this week over an application by banks for a long-term exemption from rules in the Australian Privacy Principles covering international money transfers. The banks argue that, once the current temporary exemption expires, they would be in breach of the rules when processing money transfers unless they had contractual arrangements in place with every potential overseas recipient.Applications by ANZ and the Reserve Bank (but which would apply to all authorised deposit-taking institutions) seek to permit them to disclose the personal information of a beneficiary of an international money transfer to an overseas financial institution.The Australian Privacy Principles were introduced in March as part of an overhaul of the Privacy Act.Under the old Privacy Act, Australian organisations were allowed to transfer personal information about an individual to someone in another country, provided certain criteria were met. This applied to international money transfers.With the introduction of the new APPs, before a bank can disclose personal information to an overseas recipient it must take steps to ensure that the recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles.The Australian Privacy Commissioner made temporary public interest determinations in March, giving the banks a limited exemption, but now the commissioner must decide whether to make a long-term determination.The banks' request for a long-term public interest determination is made on the basis that the public interest in being able to process international money transfers for their clients outweighs the public interest in adhering to the Privacy Principles.ANZ said in its submission that it was not practical for it to meet the requirements set out in the Act when processing international money transfers, arguing that it would be very difficult for it to negotiate individual contracts with overseas recipients to ensure their compliance with APPs.ANZ said: "The nature of the international money transfer process, with its wide range of daily transactions and significant transaction volume, makes it impractical to have enforceable contractual arrangements with every potential overseas recipient."An IMT is any payment made by an Australian sender to a beneficiary outside Australia. ANZ said it handled thousands of such payments by individuals and corporations every day.ANZ said: "Furthermore, we note that in the context of IMTs, each bank that receives information as part of an IMT transaction is operating under its own privacy regime and would have little or no incentive to agree to a separate set of privacy standards to process IMTs received from ANZ."