Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 and support the amendment moved by the shadow minister, the member for Sydney. I think that the contribution made by the member for Blaxland was very insightful and really encapsulated the concerns that the opposition has over the failure of this government to properly balance the tension between securing information centrally on one hand and providing and guaranteeing safeguards for people’s individual freedom on the other.

That is one of the concerns that Labor has expressed in the course of this debate. We are still unsure that the government has provided sufficient guarantees that there are the necessary safeguards. For that reason, the shadow minister has moved the amendment, which includes the provisions:

“while supporting the use of smart card technology to improve service delivery in Medicare and social security; to reduce the number of cards necessary for people using these services; and to reduce  social security and health fraud;

the House is of the opinion that the bill should not proceed in its current form because:

(1)

there are inadequate safeguards to protect the accuracy and privacy of information on the card and in the register;

(2)

the Government continues to keep secret key information about the costs of the card; and

(3)

there is no guarantee that the Document Verification Service will be fully operational with appropriate safeguards by the commencement date proposed”.

There are concerns that are yet to be attended to by the government in relation to this matter. Throughout the course of this debate, I think opposition members have managed to emphasise the main concerns that we have. We would ask the government to consider the propositions put, because in a proper consideration of those recommendations we are confident that the government will consider incorporating them into the bill. That would, of course, provide an opportunity for us to reach some agreement on this particular matter.

It is important to note that the government is seeking to spend $1.2 billion over the course of the next four years on the so-called access card. The card itself seeks to replace up to 17 cards, including Medicare cards, PBS concession cards and all Centrelink cards. According to the government, by 2010 a person will need an access card to obtain any Commonwealth benefit, including Medicare, PBS subsidised pharmaceuticals, social security and veterans’ entitlements. According to the Attorney-General, the cardholder’s photograph, name, digital signature, new identifying number, expiry date and other information will appear on the face of the card.

There is a concern in relation to the information that would be provided. I would like to make the point that the government commissioned Professor Allan Fels to report on the privacy aspects of the proposed card. He recommended to the government that the unique identifying number and electronic signature not be displayed on the card because they are unnecessary and pose a risk to people’s security. Unfortunately, Professor Allan Fels’s recommendations fell on deaf ears and the government has chosen to instead include those pieces of information on the card. I think that exemplifies the government’s disregard for concerns raised on this matter. Concerns were raised not only by the opposition but also by an academic who was asked to provide a report upon it, commissioned by the government. Some of the recommendations that Professor Fels made were completely and utterly ignored.

It is also important to note that, although I am not sure whether government members have chosen to express their concerns in the chamber, a number of members, including the member for Moncrieff and the member for Mackellar, have expressed major concerns about the way the government has gone about this proposed access card. The member for Moncrieff indicated:

… the Access Card could become a “Trojan horse” for a national ID card.

That is the view of the member for Moncrieff. As I say, I am not sure whether he has actually visited the chamber and put his views but I am aware that many of these views have been expressed publicly by him. He may well be right that if there are not proper safeguards there will be concerns about the way this could be used improperly in future.

The member for Mackellar managed to utilise, some would argue, some hyperbole by saying it does not pass the Nazi test. I do not think I would advance the argument in the way the member for Mackellar would advance the argument that there are concerns about the card, but clearly her point underlines the fact that this government is not united on the way the minister is proposing to introduce this bill. There are major divisions within the government. Clearly the executive government is ignoring not only the concerns of the Labor opposition and Professor Fels, who was commissioned to undertake the review of the way the card would operate, but also its own members in this place. That is not the first time we have seen the government choose not to listen to concerns raised by members. I would advise the government to reconsider its failure to review the comments made by both government members and opposition members in this debate.

There are a number of other issues I would like to raise. Much of this debate could be given against the backdrop of the Australia Card debate of many years ago, of the mid-eighties. I recall at the time the then opposition leader, the now Prime Minister, raising concerns about the way that card was being proposed. In a debate that was held in September 1987, the then opposition leader indicated:

Basically, that is what the Government is doing with this proposal. It has not really discharged the onus of proving that there is a superior public claim to justify the erosion of the private right. It has not discharged that obligation and until it discharges it by satisfying the Australian public on privacy grounds and on cost benefit grounds—it is a long way short on both of those ...

You can see that the Prime Minister almost 20 years ago raised concerns about the way a particular card would be introduced and he raised, quite rightly, some concerns about whether the balance was being met between individual considerations and rights of privacy and the need to store information.

As we well know—and it has been well articulated by the member for Blaxland—the capacity for society to collect information has increased exponentially over these 20 years. Whilst that can be a good thing insofar as enabling governments to work efficiently in storing and using information—and I think the point that has been emphasised by the opposition is that we can see some benefits—there is also the flip side to that technological change over the last 20 years, and that is that there is a great capacity for people to misuse information. Governments, and third parties who hack into systems, can misuse information, and the information stored in many respects will be very sensitive information to particular individuals. That is why I think it is a very important debate to be had and it is important that the government consider the amendment being proposed by the shadow minister responsible for this area—because, without properly ensuring that there are protections in place, many constituents of mine in the electorate of Gorton and indeed many citizens of this country are going to feel alarmed by the proposition that we need to proceed along this path.

Throughout the debate I do not think the opposition has sought to be in any way hysterical or exaggerate the concerns that people have in relation to this matter. By way of contrast, I think members opposite, government members—perhaps not in this place but certainly publicly—have expressed concerns in an extreme way. I think the opposition has attempted to in a temperate manner raise concerns about the way the government chooses to propose legislation that in our view has not really met the balance between the two competing interests: the need to improve the efficiency of collation and use of sensitive information and the need to protect that information from misuse by either government or third parties in the future. For that reason I oppose the bill but support the amendment moved. I ask the government to reconsider its position.

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