Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Privacy Amendment (Public Health Contact Information) Bill 2020. I did have quite a long speech prepared, but I will make it brief because I don't think there's any doubt in the House as to where I stand on the COVIDSafe app. I see it as a very important tool in the ongoing management of the coronavirus pandemic. I am of course in support of any measures that are taken to reduce the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. I'm very grateful for the efforts of Chris Bowen, shadow health minister, and Mark Dreyfus, shadow Attorney-General, for the work that they've done with the government to improve the app itself and the privacy provisions of the app. It's very important that I point out that the app itself uses bluetooth technology—it doesn't use geolocation—and that the privacy provisions have been described as the greatest privacy provisions of any legislation brought into this parliament. So I am fully in support of the app.

Whilst I'm now a politician, I'm first and foremost a paediatrician, and I know firsthand how difficult contact tracing can be for conditions such as whooping cough, measles, typhoid fever, meningococcal disease and many others. Contact tracing is very time-consuming. It's often fraught with missing contacts. The COVIDSafe app is a 21st century way of contact tracing that will be very important if we are to loosen our social-distancing restrictions and get to a more open society as people start to move around and start to have more contact. So let there be no doubt that I am fully in support of this legislation and the app itself.

As a physician, I have looked after people with end-stage renal failure and people on ventilators who can't be taken off a ventilator and eventually die. It's no great way to die. Anything we can do to reduce those deaths would be wonderful. The COVIDSafe app will be part of that support of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

There are issues that have been discussed—in particular, the difficulty in dealing with people who have glucose monitoring apps on their phones. These are being dealt with, as are some of the other difficulties in the use of the app, and I have no doubt that the app will be modified over the coming weeks. But it is important that we put it in place. It is important that we all download it, for all our sakes, and I am fully in support of it.

I've practised medicine for over 40 years, and I've been quite strident in expressing my views and my opinions about the coronavirus pandemic that we're all facing. We don't know how it's going to end. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know whether this virus will persist in the community for many years. We don't know whether it will be a seasonal virus. We don't know whether it will mutate to be a milder illness. But we do know that there are over four million people in the world—probably double that—who are already infected, and over a-quarter-of-a-million people are dead. We need to save lives. This COVIDSafe app will be part of that solution, and I fully support it—let there be no doubt. There's nothing more for me to say.

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