Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services, Housing, Youth and Women) Share this | Hansard source

I move opposition amendment (2):

(2)    Clause 8, page 12 (line 23) to page 13 (line 27), omit the clause.

This amendment relates to the extraordinary amount of ministerial power included in this legislation. The legislation leaves so much to ministerial interpretation and additions and subtractions. It is extraordinary that such an important piece of legislation would have so little guidance for public servants and would leave so much to ministerial discretion. For example, under this bill, the minister and the departmental secretary already have enormous powers to add information or requests for information to the card and to the database, to expand the uses of the card and to issue guidelines that will shoulder out parliamentary oversight. For example, the secretary of the department has the power to order that original identity documents presented by a person registering for the access card be scanned and stored on the register. That in itself is a problem which Labor have raised a number of times, because it makes the register a honey pot for identity thieves. For the first time, every Australian adult’s personal details will be available in the one place: where they live, who their children are, how old they are, their place and date of birth, plus all sorts of information that Australians might willingly put on the register. In addition, you will have scanned copies of birth certificates, marriage certificates and so on.

The ministerial guidelines will be used as the primary interpretive aid by Commonwealth officers, who really should be referring back to what the parliament’s intention is in relation to this legislation rather than to ministerial guidelines that will change from time to time. One of the reasons that is so very important with respect to this legislation, compared with other legislation, is that so much in this legislation is left unsaid. There are still so many unclear areas. We do not know what will be covered in access card bill (No. 2) and access card bill (No. 3). Hopefully, some of the gaping holes will be filled in. What we do not want to see is the minister’s discretion filling in those holes willy-nilly as the minister pleases.

At this point I remind the House that the member for Moncrieff said last night that he had some concerns about ‘function creep on the slippery slope’. In this respect, I suggest that it is only a matter of time—and indeed we have some evidence of it thus far—before the private sector will say: ‘We seek access to the national registration database to ensure that the card presented is a valid card.’ It will not be very long and certainly not much of a stretch to suggest that the continued production of the card to verify identity would see widespread calls from the private sector for this purpose.

Leaving the potential to the minister and to the department to expand the information collected, to change the way the information is stored, to change who has access to it and under what circumstances they have that access, and to change the uses of the card at any time with the stroke of a pen, is of enormous concern to the Australian Labor Party. That is why we are moving that ministerial power should not override or substitute legislation in this bill.

Question put:

That the amendment (Ms Plibersek’s) be agreed to.

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