Australia's Department of Human Services' Centrelink has confirmed the implementation of keyloggers in order to monitor its staff access customer data and has also made public the surveillance findings for the past two years. The keylogging software unveiled inappropriate staff access and misuse of customer records from a national ID database. The surveillance uncovered that 585 staff members have indulged in over 790 incidents of inappropriate accessing client records.

The overall findings resulted in five cases being referred to authorities. 19 employees were fired, 92 resigned and in excess of 300 suffered financial penalties, demotions and warnings. As to the ethical aspect of such measures, Australian IT managers have generally expressed their support for keylogg monitoring. "It really depends on the situation; for monitoring of public records such as the police and government departments, keylogging could be very useful," said Russell Close, head of IT within financial services firm Portfolio Partners Pty Ltd. "There wouldn't be ethical issues if it is conducted lawfully and the data being monitored is a matter of public concern. Personally I would not have a problem with using surveillance software to monitor staff."

Centrelink Chief Executive Officer Jeff Whalan failed to apologize for monitoring personnel over two years via spyware using the results as justification, but argued that out of the 25,000 staff only 2% were found to behave inappropriately.