Bob Sercombe (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Overseas Aid and Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over recent years I have made a number of speeches in the House in relation to Telstra and privacy issues. Some of the themes that I have covered were picked up last year in the Australian newspaper. For example, on 1 September last year the Australian dealt with some of the issues in a story headed ‘Telstra admits snooping on staff but denies “dirt files”’. Amongst other matters, the company secretary of Telstra was quoted as saying: ‘Secret dossiers are not kept and Telstra does not seek to collect information on employees’ et cetera. Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table a document obtained under summons by a constituent of mine. It is the coversheet of a Telstra file on an employee and is marked ‘Telstra: secret’.

Leave granted.

If an employee file marked ‘Telstra: secret’ is not a secret dossier, I do not know what is. Also under summons, my constituent received a number of papers, including a handwritten note on a Telstra file that gives the name ‘Helen, Moorabbin CIB’ and a phone number. Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table this document.

Leave granted.

What is concerning about this is that here we have file No. 2 on an employee marked ‘secret’. One has to ask what happened to file No. 1, and whether there are any others. It concerned my constituent so much that there is a reference on her file in relation to contact with the CIB that she wrote to the ethical standards department of the Victoria Police and, amongst other things, said:

Given the information available to me, I am deeply concerned that it appears my LEAP file has been subject to unauthorised access and I have grave concerns that information contained on my LEAP file has been passed to an unauthorised third party.

Given the controversy in Victoria in relation to unauthorised access to police files, one would think the Victoria Police may well have reacted to this. However, my constituent received a letter back, saying:

This department does not investigate allegations such as yours based on the information you have given.

There are a number of areas of potential serious concern here. Firstly, the company secretary’s statement that Telstra does not keep secret files on its employees is clearly shown to be incorrect. Secondly, the apparent evidence of some sort of connection between Telstra in its dealings with its employees and Victoria Police is equally concerning. Also, I am somewhat concerned, given the controversy that occurs in Victoria particularly in relation to access to police files, that the ethical standards department of Victoria Police appears not to be willing to investigate this allegation.