Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Swooned. He is my favourite. This bill strengthens our ability to do this.

People smugglers are individuals who seek to make a quick buck out of the suffering of some of the must vulnerable people in the world. Targeting the ability of these individuals to make money out of their illicit trade and attacking the systems used to handle payment will make it more difficult for them to do business. Every time we make it harder for people smugglers to do business, we force them to analysis why they engage in the business in the first place.

Aside from strengthening the government’s response to people-smuggling and terrorism, this bill will also make it easier for consumers to access certain services online. Currently, banks and other businesses must know their customers—that is, they have to confirm the identity of anyone who wants to open a bank account and transfer money, among other things. Currently this is done using hard-copy documents, which sounds very old-fashioned. There is only limited availability for the use of electronic sources for identity checking. As a result, the take-up of electronic verification has been low. This has been costly for business and inconvenient for customers and consumers. This bill proposes to change that and open up another source of electronic verification—credit reporting information. This will improve the take-up rate and success of electronic identification.

Importantly, the government has introduced a number of privacy protections in recognition of the potential for harm that could arise from this electronic process of doing business. First, consumers must consent to have their personal information disclosed for the purposes of verification. Alternative options must be presented. Second, a credit reporting agency can only provide an overall assessment of the extent of the match between personal information and what it holds on file. It cannot disclose any further information. Reporting entities and credit-reporting agencies must retain records for seven years and provide access by those individuals to those records.

Finally, on the unauthorised access of verification information, obtaining access to verification information by false pretences or the unauthorised use of disclosure will carry a penalty, which at present is $33,000. This change will make it easier for consumers to access financial services, it will decrease the compliance cost of business and it will open up competition in the sector, particularly between online and traditional branch structures.

This is a comprehensive bill that covers a range of areas. I have just touched on a few of them. Most importantly, it strengthens provisions around the transfer of moneys through alternative remittance providers. It will make it more difficult for these services to be used for criminal ends and forms a core part of the government’s approach to combating people-smuggling, terrorism and organised crime. I commend the bill to the House.

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