James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Better and Fairer Schools (Information Management) Bill 2024. I commend the contributions made by the lead speaker for the government in the House and the Manager of Opposition Business, who outlined that in principle we are supportive of what this bill purports to achieve. There are a couple of concerns, though, that I will touch on.

This bill extends the unique student identifier to the schools sector—this is something that already applies to people in the university and VET sector—and will essentially link together the records management and tracking of students to earlier stages in their education, being those in the school sector. The principle of that is not objectionable. The main point I address is something that is going to be an ever-ongoing tension in bills like this that we consider going forward, as technology in the digital world gives government the ability to create efficiencies with data. We need to balance that, and we in the coalition are very concerned about ensuring we're balancing that, with ever-increasing protections of people's privacy, and make sure that we don't accidentally, from piece of legislation to piece of legislation, head down a path where there is a dangerous amount of information on individuals that's not properly protected and the privacy of those individuals is not protected.

As the Manager of Opposition Business mentioned in the House, we're very anxious to see what the government's progress is in reviewing the Privacy Act, which has been reviewed periodically—it dates back to originally being passed in the late eighties; I think it was 1988, from memory. It's vitally important, when we talk about legislation like this—which we're not opposed to—that's putting another way for government to collect information on the Australian people, that, whilst there are arguments of efficiency for government each time these bills come through, we make sure we're reflecting on and increasing the protections for people's privacy and people's data as government has a growing capability of bringing together multiple data points on people's various interactions with government. We shouldn't have to delve into the merit of and the need for the protection of the privacy of our citizens from the misuse of that data.

I think of myself, and I have—and most people are probably the same—a Medicare number, a drivers licence number, a tax file number. I think the Electoral Commission has some kind of number on us all when we're on the electoral roll. If you access support through Services Australia, there are—as we all know as members of parliament—the client numbers that Centrelink use, and there are all the other different ways in which government collects information on people.

We don't have, and we should never have, some kind of central ID-type requirement in our society, where all the information that the government knows about you is centrally placed, under one umbrella. It's important that information on people is kept only where it needs to be and not inappropriately shared and that there is a strong legislative framework in place to make sure that there is not a risk that—without the knowledge of parliament, in particular, and the people therefore—government is inappropriately bringing all this data together to do things with it that are not appropriately consented to by the people of Australia, through the parliament.

I'm not alleging at all that this bill is some kind of surreptitious attempt to do that. It's obviously the expansion of an existing scheme and existing principles that were legislated when we were last in government. The Student Identifiers Act was legislated when we were in government. This is expanding the people captured by it. We're not concerned by the principle of that, but we've made the important point that we just want to keep front of mind that, with bills that relate to the way in which we collect information on the Australian people, we've got to, as we expand the way we do that, also expand the protections and the safeguards that are in place to make sure that the ever-increasing amount of data that is being stored on people is in no way open to abuse.

Every time new schemes come in, there is always a risk that some unforeseen or unintended consequence could come of that. So we would welcome the minister, in summing up on this bill, maybe just giving us some kind of elaboration on where the government is at with the Privacy Act and reflecting on the fact that this is another example of a new record-keeping statute that could justify reflecting on how the Privacy Act and other protections that are in place, via the Information Commissioner et cetera, are appropriately fit for purpose in the modern era, with the way in which we collect data on the Australian people.

Having made those comments—I intended to be brief—I'll conclude and commend this bill to the House. While we're passing this, I seek and hope for some update from the government on where they're at with considering, reviewing and improving the frameworks in place to protect information that we keep on people.

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