Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Identity Verification Services Bill 2023 is a very important bill. There was something that the member for Riverina shared. I was sitting and listening to him and reflecting. It was a really important example of why this bill is so important and of the social licence and trust that we need to have when it comes to digital ID and to identification. He spoke about the Australia Card, and he gave a history of the challenges with that in the eighties. I sat and reflected while listening to him. I was very young when that debate was happening, so clearly I wasn't conscious of it at the time. But many years later, I'm aware of the Australia Card and the debacle that it was and the damage that it caused to digital and to identification and the challenges we have. That's why we have to be so careful in this space. It is challenging. It is complex. We need to balance efficiency—making sure we're talking to the right people—with, importantly, the need to protect people and make sure they don't get scammed.

As we continue to move into a digital world, there are great productivity gains and great opportunities that can be taken with digital, but there are increased risks. And it's not just the digital world that creates risk in terms of identification, which is why we need to get it right. The physical world creates risk as well. Just recently, I had an issue with some insurance and had to make a claim. I put the claim in and received a phone call from a number that I didn't know. They identified themselves as the insurance company, so everything seemed like it should be in order. Then they asked me for my name and my date of birth, and that's when I hesitated and took a second, and had a long conversation with them, saying, 'Hang on, if you're ringing me, why are you asking for my details?' I refused to give them and didn't get anywhere in the conversation. I still don't know whether that was a legitimate call from that organisation or whether it was a scam. In 2023, when people still don't know if it's a scam—and I agree with the member for Latrobe that it was most likely a scam. If it was, it was a good one, because the information had gone in and this was a couple of days later. The reason for the call was legitimate. That's the challenge we face. We need to find ways to make sure that digital identification is safe, accurate, efficient and can reduce those scams.

We can't lose the social licence. We can't lose the trust with the community. Unfortunately, we know that in the current environment more people than ever are concerned about their digital identity. They're aware more than ever about the data that's out in the world. Hacks like the Optus hack and the Medibank hack are making them more aware, more concerned. We need to acknowledge—and it's not a partisan issue; it's all governments—that there is a lack of trust in us as an institution, which we need to address. That's why this bill is really important. And it is disappointing and concerning that the government haven't engaged and consulted widely. It is complex. It has deep ramifications. While we definitely support the principle of what the government is trying to achieve, I urge them to let this continue into a committee stage, to look at this detail and understand the unintended consequences, because these are complex things.

The community needs to have faith in what we are doing, but industry needs to be brought to the table. When we're talking about technology and digital, it is complex. One of the biggest challenges we face with the digital economy—and this fits perfectly into the digital economy—is how we engage with an industry and a technology that are moving at a pace quicker than ever. It is not partisan; it is the system we work in, but it takes time to put through legislation and regulations. We need to get that balance right. But industry knows exactly what's happening. The digital economy will unlock significant productivity growth, which is so important for our country, particularly given the economic challenges that we face.

In 2019, the McKinsey Global Institute report Digital identification: a key to inclusive growth found that extending full digital identity coverage could unlock economic value equivalent to 3-13 per cent of GDP by 2030. A World Economic Forum analysis estimated that 70 per cent of new value created in the economy over the next decade is expected to be delivered by digitally enabled platforms. That's the opportunity that we have as a nation. and that the government has to work to unlock. We as an opposition have to support them where it's good legislation, and hold them to account to unlock that opportunity.

But, if we lose the social trust of the community, we won't be able to unlock that potential. That's some of the frustrations that I have with this bill—they're not consulting with the states and with industry. It's a continual trend and theme of this government not understanding the opportunities that we have in the digital and tech sector. Nothing shows that more than the government refusing to have a minister for the digital economy. There's not one minister in this government with sole responsibility for making sure that the digital economy and the opportunities—as this bill has—can be unlocked. This is another example—I think there are countless bills I've spoken on where I've used this example. It sits under many portfolios, as you'd expect, because, ultimately, everything in the modern world is digital. You need one minister leading the conversation and leading in this space. There is frustration in industry at the moment about the slow pace of rollouts of many things, including digital ID. I was speaking to a bunch of entrepreneurs and start-ups last week about AI, which links to this as well. There is significant—

Sitting suspended from 11 : 35 to 11 : 46

As I said, I was speaking to this group about AI, and there was a level of frustration about what they felt was a disconnect between the government and where policy was at. ChatGPT was the example. It's been in the spotlight. It's an issue they have been grappling with since November last year. They are still waiting for leadership and clarification on what they can do. So what they have to do in the meantime is work to the toughest standard around the globe, which is the European standard. That hurts innovation and productivity, but it's what they have to work with until they get certainty. They're investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions of dollars, in these technologies, particularly AI, without the certainty of where the regulation is going to be. They're caught in this really tricky place of needing to invest and wanting to invest but not knowing the legislative environment they're going to be investing in.

That's why we need to continue to close that gap between government, regulation and industry. It's one of the reasons I was proud to be a co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tech and Innovation. We had our first event this morning, talking about AI. It was great to hear firsthand from industry about the opportunities, the challenges and some of the regulatory environments they're working in.

I've also called repeatedly for a technological assessment office, similar to the Parliamentary Budget Office, to give all MPs and all staff independent advice on technology and what's happening. This bill is an example of how that office could give some technical understanding to us of all of the consequences and the implications. We are never going to be experts. We can't be because it's moving so quickly. It's so dynamic. But, if we don't understand the challenges and the opportunities, the risk is we'll regulate too much and stop innovation and growth.

In conclusion, it may be that, once the committee has completed its review, we will support this. As I said, we do support the principle of this bill. At their heart, they are good ideas. It is important that we get this right. But it is, as I said, a missed opportunity, a failure to follow through and, ultimately, a botched process. Until these bills are scrutinised and we have that clarity about their scope and impact, it's not the sort of legislation that we can just wave through.

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