Is it legal to record business calls in Australia?

It depends on your state and on consent, and this is a genuine legal question rather than a technical setting. Australian surveillance and listening device laws vary between states and territories, and the safe, standard practice is to announce that calls may be recorded so the other party can object or hang up. Get advice for your jurisdiction and industry before switching it on.

We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice, which is worth saying plainly because the consequences here are not IT consequences. What we can be useful about is the practical shape of doing it properly, because businesses often enable recording as a feature and never make the three decisions that turn it from a liability into a tool.

The first decision is announcement, and it is close to universal practice: an automated message at the start of the call telling the caller recording may occur. The second is retention, meaning how long recordings are kept before automatic deletion. Indefinite retention is the default in many systems and it is the wrong answer, because recordings are personal information and often sensitive, so keeping everything forever expands what a breach would expose while adding nothing. Choose a period tied to why you are recording, and document the reasoning.

The third is access. Recordings contain customer details, complaints, occasionally payment information, and a system where any staff member can browse them is a privacy incident waiting to happen. Restrict access to a named small group and make sure that access is logged. Decide all three before enabling the feature rather than afterwards, because the recordings made in the meantime are governed by whatever the defaults were. If you want it configured properly, call 1800 456 567.