Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

R (—) (): I rise to speak on the Treasury capitals Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022. The coalition understands that our digital economy matters. It is crucial to our success as a nation that our businesses are innovating and adopting digital technology. Not only does digital adoption enable entirely new businesses and sectors to grow and flourish, creating jobs and prosperity, but it also delivers efficiency gains for businesses in sectors like mining and retail because it creates efficiencies, lifts productivity, generates more profits and raises incomes for workers.

In government, we developed a digital economy strategy with a view to driving the digital advancement of small businesses, our workforce, start-ups and infrastructure. Under the current government there is no such focus. There is no minister for the digital economy and there should be. There is no clear digital economy goal committed to by the Australian government and there should be. The Digital Transformation Agency has been relegated to the bowels of the finance department. The Albanese government should make our digital economy a national priority. There needs to be a serious drive towards digitisation in sectors where such take-up is falling behind.

The government should be getting on with the work the coalition started on a digital identity scheme. Australians should have access to better and more efficient government services, meaning more of how we interact with government should be digital. And, in the increasingly challenging security environment in which we live, cybersecurity should be prioritised—for example, incentivising businesses to take practical steps to reduce their risk of hacking.

I've spoken of the coalition's digital economy strategy, and the consumer data right was a key part of that. Established through legislation introduced in 2019, the consumer data right represented a bold step in increasing the level of digitisation in Australia's economy. A consumer data right gives Australians the ability to have their data shared with businesses when they want that to happen—for example, when comparing and switching providers for an energy plan or a bank loan. This is particularly relevant in 2023, as the Albanese Labor government presides over a worsening cost-of-living crisis, having wholly failed to implement its promises of cheaper mortgages and a promised $275 cut to household and business power bills.

In July 2020 the consumer data right became active for financial products and services, referred to as open banking, with the big four banks able to meet customer requests for banks to share their data for home loans, investment loans, personal loans and joint accounts. In the 2021 budget the coalition invested $111.3 million to speed up the rollout of the consumer data right in banking, energy and telecommunications. The coalition's detailed work to bring the energy sector within the net of the consumer data right meant that this was able to occur in November last year. Following advice from government agencies as well as thorough consultation with the sector and with experts, strong privacy and information security provisions were built into the legislation. The privacy protections under the regime have been developed on the advice of the Australian Information Commissioner, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner will have the job of enforcement.

The reality is that Australia faces an environment in which our national productivity growth, according to the Productivity Commission, is at its lowest rate in 60 years. This is where digitisation holds great promise as a doorway to greater economic growth and efficiency. In the case of the consumer data right, the capacity for a consumer to have his or her data shared or passed from one competitor in a sector to another means that businesses that are competing in those sectors will have to work harder to keep existing customers or to acquire new ones. They will have to evolve to become more productive.

In 2021 the Treasury undertook a strategic assessment of the economy-wide rollout of the consumer data right. The then coalition government's response to that report summarised key factors to support future prioritisation and sequencing of the expansion of the consumer data right. These included the benefit for consumers: that inclusion of data search should enable improved decisions to be made by or for consumers which are beneficial to them. The second factor was the value for data recipients: Inclusion of datasets should create value through enabling innovation by data recipients, which improves productivity. The third was the transformation of sectors: Inclusion of datasets should align with the need for the sector to be digitally active. A fourth consideration was the cost for data holders: Inclusion of datasets should not cause an unjustifiable net cost to data holders. And a fifth policy driver was inclusion—that datasets should align with or support the achievement of other policy goals.

The bill before the House today, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022, amends the Competition and Consumer Act to enable consumers to 'authorise, manage and facilitate actions securely in a digital environment' under the data rights framework. The coalition supports this bill and, as we have made clear, we will seek to refer it to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee to report back by the end of the financial year. The bill further implements the rollout of the consumer data right by introducing a new channel within the legislation that enables consumers to instruct a business to initiate actions such as making a payment, opening or closing an account, switching providers and updating personal details across providers on a consumer's behalf with the consent of that consumer. It therefore provides consumers with the ability to initiate actions under the data right, rather than simply having their data shared.

As an example, under this legislation, the consumer can instruct a single service provider to update his or her personal details. There are clear benefits, in terms of a stronger set of cybersecurity arrangements, from making this possible, as well as the more obvious benefit of giving consumers access to a simplified, streamlined and less onerous process. This particular measure implements a recommendation from the report of the 2020 inquiry into the Future directions for the consumer data right. That recommendation was that the consumer data right's functionality should be strengthened and deepened. That recommendation was accepted by the previous coalition government.

That being said, the opposition notes that, in consultations, we have detected some concerns about the capacity and ability of businesses to implement these reforms effectively and in compliance with the rules. Small business operators and businesses that primarily service small business and rely on high levels of data have concerns about their obligations under the consumer data right and their ability to implement reforms on the time lines proposed by the government. Datasets that fall within the net of the consumer data right can be large and complex. It is therefore critical that these consumer data right reforms are implemented properly and tested, so consumers can have confidence that their data is safe and so that public faith in the scheme, more broadly, is preserved. This is a key reason why the opposition is seeking to have this bill referred to a committee in the Senate so that that committee can more closely examine the way that businesses are envisaged by Treasury to implement these reforms, in line with the time line that's been laid out.

The consumer data right has the potential to deliver significant benefit to our economy, in driving both better consumer outcomes and innovation by businesses, as they compete to provide the best products and services for their customers and as they compete to win customers.

However, we do know, regrettably, that, when it comes to the task of implementing policy, Labor governments often go woefully, disastrously and spectacularly wrong. There is a litany of public policy disasters that Labor governments have presided over in the past 20 years, and, if we're to go back earlier than that, we'd find an even longer litany. Therefore, we, in opposition, take very seriously our role in scrutinising the work of the government, composed, as it largely is, of a ramshackle collection of former union secretaries. We do think it's appropriate to bring to bear some expertise in implementation, which I'm pleased to say that those of us on this side of the chamber—many of us who have significant private sector backgrounds—are able to deliver.

We don't deny the skills that, for example, the minister who's presently in the chamber learnt by standing in front of demonstrations with a megaphone, yelling out: 'What do we want? X. And when do we want it? Now!' I could acknowledge the Deputy Speaker's own expertise in that critical function as well. All of these are important skills; I don't doubt that. But the question that I simply ask is: to what extent do they equip those people who are presently ministers in this government with the capacity to actually implement complex reforms? And, if we look at the record that the minister present in the chamber has racked up in about eight months, that's a very obvious question.

I'm pleased to tell the chamber that we're here to help. We're here to offer the benefit of our extensive private sector expertise, and we'll be doing that conscientiously when it comes to the consumer data right bill.

See this speech in context