Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Education and Employment I present the committee's advisory report on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Maximum Payment Amounts and Other Measures) Bill 2012, together with the minutes of proceedings and evidence received by the committee, and I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

In accordance with standing order 39(f) the report was made a parliamentary paper.

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Maximum Payment Amounts and Other Measures) Bill 2012 was introduced into the House on 12 September. On 13 September the House Selection Committee referred the bill to the Education and Employment Committee for inquiry and report.

The bill consists of three schedules. Schedules 1 and 2 are just funding, and schedule 3 proposes amendments relating to the use and disclosure of data collected under the Higher Education Support Act 2003. The Selection Committee cited the principal matter for consideration was the measures under schedule 3, which were the issues around privacy.

The inquiry received six submissions. All bar one expressed strong support for the proposed measure on the grounds of the facilitation of the efficient and timely collection and sharing of data. The National Tertiary Education Union stated their reservations on aspects of this measure, and the committee was keen to follow up to see if these concerns were shared more widely. We approached the Privacy Commissioner, who had not put in a submission, and the National Union of Students to seek their comments as to whether they had any additional concerns that they may not have put in a submission. Both of these groups were satisfied with the safeguards accompanying the proposed measures. Both organisations confirmed their satisfaction, and, accordingly, the committee has recommended that the House pass the bill.

In closing I would like to thank all my committee colleagues who supported the inquiry, and Glen Worthington, from the committee secretariat. I commend the report to the House.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As deputy chair of the committee that reviewed this legislation, I thank the chair for her remarks. This was relatively uncontroversial. As the chair just outlined, there were three schedules. The first two are about funding. The third one was a little bit more controversial, in fact, because it involved the divulgement of private details of individuals to governments and departments within the education sector. This information is important to those bodies who make the decisions about the funding of the Australian education networks and to the way that we develop policy. On balance, the committee felt that it was right that they should have that information.

But concerns arose around an individual's right to privacy. I inquired of the department about what information at unit level actually entailed, because I was a bit confused by the term 'unit level'. Apparently, unit level is the level of the person: I am a unit, Mr Deputy Speaker Oakeshott is a unit and the member for Sturt is a unit. But when I made these inquiries and asked what level of information was then available about these particular units, I found that it included your age, your place of residence and your gender—all obvious things. But you can also find out whether the person is in receipt of a disability pension and what that disability might be. You can probably find out their ethnic origin. There is a depth of information there that I do not necessarily feel particularly comfortable about being available to the wider sector.

Then the concern is who has the rights to this information. The Privacy Commissioner assured us that he is happy with the protocols that have been put in place to ensure that this information does not fall into the wrong hands. I am relying on that advice in endorsing this bill, so I hope that the Privacy Commissioner has it right and that we will not be drawn back to this place at a future time to try to patch up something because that information stream has got out of order. Those protocols are of paramount importance. I take it on good faith that the information that the committee has received is accurate and to the point. Thank you.