Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Digital ID is a proud coalition reform. The Australian government's first digital identity, myGovID, was part of a $256 million investment, called the digital business package, as part of the 2020-21 budget. Digital ID stalled under Labor despite the program first receiving funding in the 2015-16 budget.

Digital ID has the potential to be a game changer for citizens and industry by saving time and making it easier to complete various transactions. In government, the coalition spent over $600 million developing the Australian government ID system, and over 10 million people already use this service via myGovID. I'm one of those, Madam Deputy Speaker. We also released draft legislation in 2021 to further regulate digital identity, because of the important efficiency and productivity benefits it could deliver. Digital ID needs to be efficient and productive, and it can add to those things, but there also need to be privacy protections. The draft legislation would have reduced the amount of personal data held by businesses about their customers, in turn reducing the risk to Australians from the kinds of data breaches that we have seen with companies like Optus, Medibank Private and Latitude Financial. However, this digital identity legislation, the Digital ID Bill 2024 and the Digital ID (Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023, introduced by the Albanese Labor government, is very different to the draft bill that the coalition released. The government's legislation has many serious weaknesses.

The coalition put forward amendments designed to fix these weaknesses, and I congratulate Senator Hume and other senators for their work on that. Our amendments included stronger guarantees that a digital ID would be voluntary—no Australian would be required to have one—and that someone would not face a lower quality of service should they wish to use traditional, paper based identity documents; removal of the phasing provisions so that the private sector could be involved from the outset; and a clear requirement that changes to the Privacy Act must be made before the legislation came into force. That amendment—the changes to the Privacy Act to give people further protections—was very important. The government, certainly to my regret and to the regret of the opposition, refused to accept our amendments in the Senate. Reaching a better outcome wasn't helped by the debate in the Senate being guillotined. It never is.

Labor is ramming these bills through the parliament, and the concern is that serious issues with these bills won't be addressed. How can Australians trust Labor to manage digital ID when they won't even allow the sort of parliamentary scrutiny that would have happened had there been a proper debate in the Senate?

Let's work through these concerns. We don't believe Labor's bills adequately ensure that this bill is truly voluntary, because every Australian deserves to receive the same quality of services regardless of how they're accessing them, be it through digital ID, face to face or however else. Amendments put forward by the coalition and rejected by this government would have provided greater certainty and protection, and would have established a stronger guarantee that having digital identity would be voluntary in the future—that no Australian would be required to have one and that, as I explained, the lowest quality of services would not exist should they choose not to have a digital ID. The amendment about the changes to the Privacy Act was also very important.

This parliament's been left in an impossible position because of how the government has proceeded with these bills. It is the decision of the coalition, supported by me certainly, that we will not support this undercooked legislation. There is too much at stake when it comes to digital ID, privacy concerns and concerns about whether it's voluntary or not.

Evidence provided in submissions made by multiple industry stakeholders has pointed out that large organisations such as banks, shopping chains and telecommunication companies are often subject to hundreds, if not thousands, of cybersecurity 'attempts' per day—that is, attempted cyberattack or cyberfraud. According to the ASD cyber threat report 2022-23, the average cost of a cybercrime, per report, was up 14 per cent in 2023. ASD also found that it cost a small business an average of $46,000 in total losses per reported cybercrime.

Digital ID is an important tool to protect Australians by limiting the need to share key identity documents online. Instead, a trusted digital identity can be used and accepted as proof of identity without the supporting identity documents being shared with the service you're accessing or being stored on a database that could be targeted by hackers.

A digital ID won't be for everyone, which is why amendments were proposed to ensure a service offered online requiring digital confirmation of your identity was also offered offline, without discrimination, to those who have chosen not to or cannot take up digital ID.

For many months, members' offices have been bombarded with emails, letters and phone calls about the digital ID. In fact, we get bombarded by emails and letters about a range of issues, which I'm sure everyone here understands. Concerns have been expressed to me via these emails, but also, as I was standing at a wonderful event called the Seymour Alternative Farming Expo recently, I had a lot of people express concerns to me and want to talk through the issues.

The concerns expressed and the feared outcomes go far beyond the concerns of the coalition. To be fair, they go beyond the concerns I have. But there is one point where they intersect, and that is the point of trust. We live in a democracy where different people have different fears, different needs, different concerns and different perspectives on how these things should work. In that free democracy, and with the liberty that we have, we believe that we should respect those differences.

Trust should be a cornerstone of a secure and inclusive digital identity system. To be honest, the more people trust it, the more people are going to use it, and that's what we want. We believe this trust has been eroded by the Albanese government's management of the passage of this bill, the lack of scrutiny and the unwillingness to accept sensible amendments proposed in good faith to improve it. And that's what the amendments would have done: they would have kept the core of the bill, but they would have improved it. Trust has further been eroded by the decision to proceed in haste with these bills prior to reforming the Privacy Act.

Trust has been dealt another blow by the failure to lock in state and territory governments. There is only one agreement from the Data and Digital Ministers Meeting, and that agreement is:

… to work together toward a National Digital Identity and Verifiable Credentials Strategy to inform an update of the National Digital ID Service Transformation Roadmap.

We think it needs to be a bit stronger than that.

If states and territories are unable to sign up to a national strategy, what confidence can this parliament and the Australian people have in this government's ability to manage the Australian government digital identity system? There's a word doing the rounds; apparently it was the word of the year either this year or last year, I'm not quite sure. It's joined the lexicon via the dictionary, and that word is 'omnishambles'. Perhaps in this digital age they might want to consider that the new double word of the year, or phrase of the year, be 'virtual omnishambles'.

We oppose these bills with regret. I really believe debate, cooperation and compromise in the Senate could have led to much better bills. The efficiencies and productivities of a really good effective digital ID system, with people's privacy respected and with people's voluntary participation respected, and with people's trust—which would have led to more voluntary participation in the system—would have led to a much better situation than we have now and much better bills. With regret, we oppose the bills.

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