Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the AusCheck Amendment Bill 2009, which amends the AusCheck Act 2007. At the outset I would like to say that, for most of us present in this parliament in the normal course of a day, this bill reflects a different world to the one in which we grew up and in which our values were formed. A bill of this nature, as with the 2007 act, would have been unimaginable in the 1950s, even though that time was in such close proximity to the end of World War II. However, in the context of the world in which we find ourselves today, these measures are not only important but necessary, and the provisions contained in the AusCheck Amendment Bill that we have before us at the moment are provisions of eminently good sense.

I spent most of my working life seeking and wearing identification cards. I worked in the aviation industry, and in those days an identity card was one which the company gave you. It bestowed upon you a privilege which you wanted, and that was to be able to go air side at airports. Now, unless you have a decent character, you cannot go air side at an airport and probably cannot work on the ground side either. I think it is important that as our first point of reference to this legislation we understand that these things are necessary in the world we have today.

The objectives of this amending legislation are very simple. They are to enable the AusCheck agency to undertake background checking beyond the aviation industry security card and the maritime industry security card functions that already exist as a consequence of the 2007 act in relation to matters where national security is concerned. ‘National security’, of course, is a somewhat difficult concept that I do not know has ever been properly defined, but I think that we all know instinctively what national security means. It is something that I know the electors of Longman and, I guess, the electors of all Australian electorates insist absolutely that this parliament look after on their behalf.

The 2007 legislation established AusCheck as a centralised, government managed, background-checking service, and it has been in operation for around two years. In that time it has developed an excellent reputation both for the speed with which it undertakes its work and for the consistency and the quality of the work that it does. AusCheck took over its functions from the Background Checking Unit of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government—although I am sure that at the time AusCheck took over those functions that was not actually the name of the department. AusCheck was established to enhance national security by establishing greater and more conspicuous control by government of security arrangements at air and sea ports. It was also to mitigate the risk of security clearances being given to people using fraudulent proof of identity documents, to reduce duplication in background-checking and, importantly at the time, to provide capacity for other background-checking purposes—and that is the purpose of the amending legislation that we have before us today. It is very appropriate that a single agency—in this case, Auscheck, which is already doing the job and doing it well—has the sole responsibility for critical background checks in areas where national security is concerned. The areas which it already operates in are areas where national security is concerned.

The expansion of the number of purposes for which AusCheck would undertake background checks was anticipated in the original bill and, as a consequence of a Senate committee having a close look at the 2006 bill, a number of changes were made. I understand that some of those changes were made following a very strong submission to the inquiry from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, who indicated that public confidence would be improved if those future, not yet defined expansions of the AusCheck function were to be undertaken only after primary legislation had been enacted. Some changes were made to the original bill as a consequence of that sentiment, if not that submission. If we have a look at the expansion that is going to occur in section 8, we see that the amendment sets out the scope of the circumstances where AusCheck will be able to manage national security background checks, which is a new term within this bill. All of those particular purposes were included in the 2006 bill but removed from it by the time the 2007 act was enacted.

I should say that one of my principal dislikes in legislative formulation occurs in the 2007 act, which could have given some ground had it not been further defined. In 18(1B) we hear that ‘the Governor-General may make regulations prescribing matters necessary or convenient for the purposes of the act’. ‘Necessary or convenient’ is a fairly wide-ranging regulatory power, exceeded only by the one that I have seen in some state legislation which says that the Governor in Council may make regulations for anything about which the act does not make sufficient or any provision. In this case, that ‘necessary or convenient’ power has been tempered by the matters that are in subsection 2 and therefore there is no threat in this legislation that there would be a capacity for the Attorney-General to move towards expanding the specific background checks without there being some principal legislation put in place in order to do that, as the Privacy Commissioner wanted. That point is made on several occasions through the material that goes hand in hand with this legislation—for example, in the second reading speech of the Attorney-General when he said:

No requirement for any person to actually have a background check will be imposed as a result of the amendment to the act ...

That is fairly clear. I do not think that any reasonable person would find anything other than that the intention of this parliament in the passage of this legislation is that the expansion of the purposes for which AusCheck will be able to conduct background checking will be for those purposes that have been established by principal legislation somewhere else.

The bill also expands a little into biometrics, as the previous speaker mentioned. Biometrics is a fairly interesting and rapidly developing science. It is somewhat defined but evolving all the time. For example, when we talk about biometrics we naturally think of fingerprints. That is the first thing that comes to mind. But there are many biometric factors that could be used: face recognition; DNA; hand and palm geometry; and iris recognition, which has largely replaced retina recognition. I also understand that biometrics can determine which of us is which of us by our odour or our scent. Our voices can also be used; physiologically each voice has a different pattern.

Some of this sounds like it could be highly invasive or so we might think. I can recall being in state parliament and participating in debates about whether or not police could require somebody to be fingerprinted and yet today, if you visit Disney World in Florida, they take your fingerprint to make sure that the person who is using the ticket in your hand is the person who paid for it and is entitled to use it. We will give Walt Disney’s heirs and successors our fingerprints but we are a bit concerned about giving them to the police. Attitudes are changing and over time these things are being used more frequently to gain access to computers, for example, so I think that the use of biometrics is something that we cannot rail too much against.

I was very interested to learn that, with privacy issues on biometrics coming to the fore as biometrics are used more and more, Australia is at the forefront of privacy in this area and that the Biometrics Institute privacy code in Australia is cited as a world first and something that ought to be considered by other countries. That led me to have a look at the Biometrics Institute because I had not heard of it until I came across that. I had a bit of a look at it on the World Wide Web, as we are wont to do these days, and thought that it is an organisation that is moving very well, as the science advances, to make sure that the users of the science are using it in an ethical way.

The document that I spoke of a moment ago is obviously too lengthy for me to bring into the parliament, but I thought the parliament might be interested in knowing who is actually looking after the ethics of the use of biometrics in this country. The board of the Biometrics Institute is made up of: Paul Kirkbride, the chief scientist in the business support area of the Australian Federal Police; David Lang, who is the manager of the Identity Services Team at the CrimTrac Agency, which is associated with the Federal Police also; Geoff Poulton, who was formerly the Senior Principal Research Scientist of the CSIRO—at the time when he was appointed to the board, that was his position; Terry Hartmann, who was the IT manager for passports at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade at the time that he was appointed, although he is in a different role now; Trevor Long, who is the manager of group facilitation in Airport Security at Qantas; Kevin Darch, who is the manager of the Visual Identification Unit of the Queensland Police Service; a New Zealander, Caroline Hubbard, who is the strategic development manager for the Department of Internal Affairs ID services in New Zealand; and another chap by the name of Philip Youngman, on whom I have very little information. These are serious people looking after the serious job of protecting the security of information for Australia and establishing a group of ethics that will inform the use of biometrics by all people who are looking to use them.

The idea of background checks is not new, as I say, and some people probably need to consider exactly what a background check entails. A number of people have had to have background checks. The first element of background checking that is undertaken in relation to an AusCheck exercise is a criminal history check from CrimTrac and the Australian Federal Police. It is clear that a person’s predilection towards criminality ought to be a preclusive factor from a number of functions, but also, in my mind, we operate in a system where people make mistakes and need to be given the benefit not of the doubt but of us believing that those who have made mistakes and paid the price should not be made to pay more.

The next part of a background check is a security assessment from ASIO. I am not sure how many of us would necessarily pass that. There was some interesting material last year about the number of drinks that a particular member of this parliament had at a function, and I am not sure whether that is an appropriate—

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