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

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that the:

(a) Government has not articulated a plan to improve the experience of citizens using digital channels to access government services and payments;

(b) 2022-23 budget did not contain a single new initiative designed to improve citizens' digital experience;

(c) 2022-23 budget will see more public servants employed by Services Australia, but without any new funding allocation to equip them with the latest digital tools; and

(d) development of the Digital Identity system has stalled significantly under the current Government to the extent that it is not even mentioned in the 2022-23 budget;

(2) further notes:

(a) most Australians are now transacting with the Government through digital channels with 1.2 billion online transactions taking place in the past financial year alone; and

(b) that the former Government initiated development on the Digital Identity system; and

(3) calls on the Government to continue the former Government's strong track record by prioritising service modernisation through digital transformation.

Given that our modern way of living is now synonymous with the use of technology to manage our lives, it is no wonder that the Optus and Medibank data breaches have alarm bells ringing. It's such sensitive personal information, including Medicare numbers and Centrelink CRNs, information used by Services Australia. Minister Shorten must uphold his responsibilities and make sure this data is secure, protecting the privacy of all Australians.

Surely the time is now for the government to prioritise as a matter of urgency the continued development of the digital identity system. A digital identity, once set up, means we can interact with government services online any time of day or night in the most secure way. It can be used for both personal and business matters.

In the last financial year alone, there were 1.2 billion online transactions through Services Australia. We know that many Australians are now transacting with government services through digital channels. By December last year, more than six million Australians were using a myGov ID, which is managed by the ATO and subject to the highest levels of identity security. It's convenient and allows us to access more than 75 digital services. We can do our taxes, apply for our safety net payments, like JobSeeker and Youth Allowance, access our immunisation records and certificates, and track payments and claims.

The coalition supports the user led audit into myGov. This review announced prior to the data breaches needs to take a very serious look into what improvements can be made to Services Australia's cyber protection. If the government is serious about the review, it must also provide the necessary funding to implement its findings. There is no doubt that the COVID pandemic has permanently changed many aspects of our lives. We are unlikely to trade in the convenience of digital channels to rejoin the long queue at a Services Australia office. Not only has the government failed to explain its plan—if it has one at all—to keep up with Australia's expectations and improve the user experience when navigating these vital digital channels; shamefully, the 2022-23 budget contained no initiatives to further improve citizens' digital experiences.

By removing staff cappings and cutting external labour, the government has drastically increased the number of public servants to be employed by Services Australia, without any indication that this would create better customer outcomes. Despite this, no new money has been provided to allow new IT systems that could simplify and make transactions with the government agencies more efficient and user friendly.

The former coalition government instinctively understood the need to modernise government services through a digital transformation. In 2015, the coalition commenced the development of the digital identity system through the Digital Transformation Agency, which was strategically placed under the guardianship of the minister responsible for government services. The coalition government completed significant groundwork in formulating a system to establish trusted identity providers. In a manner similar to myGovID, a person would be able to use an identity provider to verify who they are through electronic checks against secure government records held by the likes of the ATO, the Australian Passport Office and state government license systems, with face identification taken by your smartphone. Your personal information is only stored once by a trusted identity provider, which is subjected to the strictest requirements to maintain security. This new system would allow banks and other third-party companies, like the telcos, to identify an individual without the need to store sensitive and private information, which, as we know, can fall into the hands of criminals. It is now time for the government to expedite a digital identity system and give Australians the option to access a secure identification system that they can use with confidence. Now more than ever, our privacy and safety depend on it.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about how the Labor government is modernising service delivery through digital transformation. This service delivery, particularly by Services Australia, has been crucial to many Australians over the past three years through the pandemic and through natural disasters, which, sadly, are continuing today as we speak. In the budget, I was pleased to see that after years of cuts Labor will bolster Services Australia staffing numbers to better deliver emergency support in the wake of increasing natural disasters, including the recent floods through eastern Australia. Services Australia staff were also crucial through the pandemic, when we saw thousands of workers who suddenly lost their jobs and were forced to line up in long queues for hours outside Centrelink offices for financial support.

That included the Centrelink in my electorate, in Braddon—the only Centrelink in my electorate, which the previous government closed. The way that my constituents found out that that Centrelink office was being closed was that an ad for the office space just happened to pop up on my Facebook page. We noticed it, and we said, 'Isn't that the Centrelink?' We wrote to the minister, and indeed it was the Centrelink. They were going to close the Centrelink, and that was the only way people found out.

Services Australia staff have been crucial through the last few difficult years. We have the Public Service to thank for working very hard through those tough years to make the policy and to deliver the services to make sure that Australians had the support they needed. Whether Services Australia staff work in contact centres, in service centres or out in the community, a number of digital tools are making their job easier, and we are aspiring for a future where customers benefit from a simplified digital service experience.

As an example, our Health Delivery Modernisation Program is focused on transforming health experiences and outcomes for health consumers, healthcare providers, government and staff. Services Australia is actively engaging with these groups to provide insights that will inform the design and construction of new digital products and services into the future. Over recent years, intelligent tools, including voice biometrics, digital assistants and push notifications, have helped users to complete more actions digitally, connecting them with staff when they need them most. We're also working to improve digital wallets, modernising our correspondence and looking for more personalised and simple ways that Services Australia can assist customers.

Our government is also committed to auditing myGov. The myGov user audit and enhanced myGov and other related digital initiatives that our government has committed to will help to improve user digital experience to access government services and payments. We are delivering on our election promise to audit myGov and expect the report by the end of the year. This audit will clear up the Morrison government's legacy of confusion and fragmentation in digital service delivery, where they created myGovID, a completely different facility to myGov that was confusing for users. The audit will chart a path from this confusion into a world-class service.

MyGov supports more than 25 million active and linked accounts, with more than 80 per cent of these customers having signed into myGov once in the last 12 months. It averages more than 1.1 million sign-ins per day, so it's critical that it's working well and is user friendly. The enhanced myGov program is focused on delivering a range of tangible improvements to create a more connected, intuitive and personalised digital experience for customers. New functions will create a simpler digital experience. A myGov app will deliver a more modern, connected and seamless myGov experience. A customisable dashboard with information about upcoming payments and tasks will be provided, as well as a more secure environment that protects customer information and privacy.

These improvements will rely on a range of new underlying capabilities which expand significantly on the traditional capability of myGov. We are moving from the traditional role to providing a single sign-on for government services such as Centrelink, Medicare, ATO and NDIA, an inbox to receive electronic mail from member services and a 'tell us once' service, which allows users to share updates to their name, address and contact details with other member services.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by thanking the member for Casey for moving this important motion. He brings to this place significant experience in the digital economy and a great passion for using digital platforms to better serve customers. It's that mindset which the Liberal and National parties bring as we think about the way that citizens ought to be served. We want to see a customer service mentality using digital technology, just as we've seen in New South Wales, where a coalition government has done an extraordinary job of delivering improved services to citizens through Service NSW and delivering digital products and services such as the digital drivers licence and many others. They've been warmly received and, of course, the minister there, Victor Dominello, has done quite a remarkable job.

By contrast, the Albanese Labor government has no plan and no enthusiasm for improving the experience of Australians using digital channels to access government services and payments. The budget did not contain a single new initiative designed to improve citizens' digital experience. That is despite the fact that citizens are overwhelmingly showing that they value engaging digitally. In fact, in the last financial year alone there were 1.2 billion online transactions. That is Australians saying how they want to deal with government. But the way the Albanese Labor government has responded to this is underwhelming, to say the least.

We've seen the Digital Transformation Agency being now put deep into the bowels of the Department of Finance, and we're already seeing a stultifying level of activity. In an underwhelming speech to the Institute of Public Administration on 13 October, Minister Gallagher, who has responsibility for the Public Service, mentioned digital just once. This government seems to be more interested in looking backwards. We hear a lot about the number of additional people that the government wants to employ within Services Australia, but we don't hear anything about the way these new employers will be supported with digital tools, and we don't hear about a focus on the customer. That may well be because if you are a public servant who works for Services Australia, you can contribute to union delegateship numbers, and that's something the Labor Party is very enthusiastic about but when it comes to serving customers. That's not really in the life experience, frankly, of most Labor Party parliamentarians.

The facts are clear in terms of how Australians want to engage with government. I've quoted numbers already. If we look at what happened between 2019 and 2021: in 2019, on average, 571,000 people were accessing myGov every day. By October 2021, this had risen to almost two million, with a record of 4.2 million in a single day. On this side of the Chamber we look with some pride at the work we were able to do to drive the take-up of digital engagement, to use tools which respond to the way citizens want to engage with their government. We would like to see the current government moving rapidly to build on that track record.

One thing they could do is continue to roll out the digital identity system. We did a lot of work on that over the last few years. This is effectively a portable, reusable digital ID card. You can think about it in those terms. One of the great benefits this offers is that, if it becomes possible for this to be used by private sector businesses and in engaging with state government departments, as it is now possible for citizens to use it in dealing with federal government departments, it allows people to verify their identity without needing to provide volumes of personal identification documents. If I'm renting a car from Hertz, Hertz needs to know that I have a driver license and that I haven't racked up so many demerit points that my license is no longer valid. But they don't actually need to know the number. They don't need to keep that on file if they can have their system engage with the Service NSW system to validate that fact and simply have that certification come back.

The work that's been done in developing myGovID is just one example of the commitment we had in government to use the capacity of digital technology to allow citizens to be served more efficiently and to engage with the government more efficiently and more quickly. There is huge potential to do more of this. The current government is lagging behind in terms of its enthusiasm for that. Let's see some more enthusiasm from the current minister rather than his squalid experience of political payback, which seems to be his main priority at the moment.

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I begin by saying that I find this to be a very audacious motion. When I say 'audacious', let me be clear: what I mean is that it is completely lacking in any credibility. It's another example—and there are so many in this Chamber and the main chamber—of those opposite coming to this place and complaining about the state of affairs that we see, forgetting, it seems, that they were in government for a decade and achieved so little. Those opposite come in, claiming that the last budget didn't do enough: 'The last budget didn't lead to digital nirvana. We were so measured. We achieved so much.' It really is a group of people who, after an election loss, don't seem to have mastered the skills of introspection. I think they could do with a little bit of looking back at their track record in this area, and so many others, with a little bit more brutal honesty. It would do them a little bit of good.

Let's look at Services Australia. I can speak about the impact of Services Australia on real people in a real-world situation in my electorate. The suburb of Maribyrnong and a number of surrounding suburbs experienced terrible floods in recent months. Dozens of homes were inundated, more than a hundred people were left homeless and hundreds of people were severely impacted. The day after the flood, many streets were still impassable due to deep mud, which was being cleaned up by the council and other agencies. Furniture was piled up in front of every home. This was the case for street after street. It looked like a war zone.

When I went doorknocking in that area the day after those streets were opened, I was working with people to access their emergency payments on the Services Australia portal, and what I found was that it worked well. It was very user-friendly. There were two things this government had done. Firstly, it had done a remarkable job, I think, of giving people access to their emergency services payments very rapidly. All they had to do was to answer a few simple questions on their phone, and they had their payment within 15 to 30 minutes. It was the payment system at its best. It was a very user friendly IT system. It wasn't completely without any difficulties, and that's why it was critically important that Services Australia had people in the community response centre just up the hill—two people, there for all business hours and often beyond business hours, helping people navigate that system. So Services Australia was operating a way that was using the digital interface. It provided people to help households who were facing very difficult circumstances—direct interpersonal help—to complement that if needed.

Contrast that with the previous government. We hear that they were so measured and strategic and achieved so much. Look at what happened to the people in Lismore. Days and days and days after the floods, people were still wondering, 'Where's the Army?' Days and days and days after the floods, they weren't getting their emergency payments. In the Maribyrnong floods, which were the major floods in my electorate, within 24 hours of the first disaster relief payments being activated, 658 claims had been paid. This was the digital payments system being used. It was speedy, it was timely, it was reliable and it was user friendly. So there's that. This government has actually operationalised Services Australia in a way that has helped people in the most difficult of circumstances, and for those opposite to go here after their performance in the previous term is quite bewildering.

But this government also has a longer term plan. As the previous speaker on this side indicated, this government is delivering on election promises by delivering a strategic plan. A report to the government will be delivered which provides an audit on myGovID, a system which the previous government had partially implemented but which, far from being so strategic and so well delivered, was something which was actually very fragmented in practice. This government is delivering on its election commitment to better deliver that system.

We are in the process of delivering a framework. It is absolutely critical to get these kinds of systems right. You can't rush them. We are setting out a process where we are going to be able to use best practice digital technology in a range of areas—again as the previous speaker indicated, in health biometrics and digital wallets—but you have to do it correctly. Services Australia is the direct interface for many people. It is critical that it is timely, user friendly and trustworthy, and this government is investing the resources and will get it right.

Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of this excellent and timely motion moved by my good friend the member for Casey. We find ourselves in a rapidly deteriorating cybersecurity environment for which we are ill prepared. In many respects, we lag behind other nations. This is an environment made more hazardous by escalating global tensions and increasingly sophisticated criminal enterprises, which expose Australians, Australian businesses and Australian institutions to rampant identity theft, online scams, blackmail and fraud, as we've seen over recent months. No-one is immune to the consequences of these crimes, which in some cases have been shown to be state sponsored and which continue to grow at an exponential rate.

Over recent years, Australians have been the target of ruthless cybercriminals and fraudsters. Once they're inside our networks and firewalls—which in some cases may not be overly difficult, as we've unfortunately discovered—there is a rich seam of wealth, information and identity to mine, and mine it they do. In the past financial year alone, some $1.2 billion in online transactions took place between Australians and Commonwealth agencies. But this is just the tip of the iceberg when you compare it to the many billions of dollars in private-sector transactions which take place over the course of the year across the whole of this country and which, in many cases, are even further exposed. In just the last few weeks, we've seen cyberattacks which resulted in the theft of massive amounts of personal data from Optus and Medibank. Of course, I wouldn't be alone in saying that many of my constituents have been affected by these issues and have raised these issues with me, as I'm sure they have with all the other members in the chamber here.

The Optus and Medibank breaches have highlighted a compelling need for a national digital identity system. The digital identity system initiated by the coalition government in 2015 is a safe, secure and convenient way for Australians to prove who they are online each time they access government services. What a fantastic improvement in online government services we saw over the course of the nine years of the previous coalition government. The system is entirely voluntary and is controlled by the individual. The coalition's digital identity system today provides safe, secure and convenient access to government services online for more than six million Australians via the myGovID provider platform. I'm sure many members here have just filled out their tax returns and had their assessments back and know how easy it is to utilise that system.

In late 2021, the coalition, after significant consultation, circulated an exposure draft to extend the number of digital identity system providers beyond the 80-odd services offered by the Commonwealth. Extending the digital identity system to state, territory and private-sector services is now a national and personal data security issue of the highest order. The extension was to include various state and territory agencies and private-sector businesses, allowing them to verify a person's identity and remove the need to collect and hold vast swathes of personal information themselves.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting that if the coalition had been returned the identity system would be up and running, and not to such an extent that the personal data that we've seen exposed by the recent Optus and Medibank matters would not have been compromised. But what I am saying quite clearly is that we would be in a far stronger position on this issue under a coalition government. Aside from firing off the odd dissenting criticism in the 2020 Senate committee report, Labor have largely been silent on the issue of digital identity. Labor failed to announce any position on a digital identity system either before the election or after the election. Labor's dereliction of duty on this issue is starkly evident in their recent budget, which failed to reference so much as a single new initiative to boost the performance or security of digital services that many Australians rely on. Labor's budget provides plenty more public servants but fails to fund the necessary digital capability that secure and reliable government services in this third decade of the 21st century will require.

The minister has finally acknowledged the urgency of the problem and has pulled state and territory digital ministers together for a blatantly beefed-up digital identity system, effectively picking up where the coalition left off before the election. I strongly encourage the Albanese government to show they care about the personal information of millions of Australians by taking action on this front, and I call upon them to urgently extend the system by introducing the coalition's Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2021. I commend the motion to the House.

Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion put by the member for Casey, a very important motion, and I acknowledge the member for Casey's experience in the technology sector, which is experience that will be very valuable during his time in parliament. This is a very important topic. The tech sector is absolutely critical. The tech sector is the seventh-largest employer in the Australian economy, employing one in 16 working Australians. That's nearly 860,000 Australian people working in the tech sector. As the tech council has said before, there are now more software and application programmers in Australia than there are plumbers, hairdressers or secondary school teachers. The tech sector has come of age, and the government's role in supporting the tech sector is very important.

The tech sector doesn't just create opportunities for government; it creates opportunities right across the economy. In my business, we used technology as a critical ingredient in our success and efficiency. Technology improved our hiring, our invoicing, our accounting, our human resources and our marketing. New digital tools did help us engage with government, improving our efficiency, saving us time and saving us money.

The tech sector will continue to grow into the future, and the government's role in supporting the tech sector's growth is absolutely critical. But, unfortunately, we have had a wasted decade in the tech sector, and that is the great irony of this motion. Today, after 10 years of coalition government, Australia ranks 36 out of 38 nations in the OECD for our ICT trade balance. When the Productivity Commission looked at Australia's digital performance this year, they released an interim report with the following observation:

… while we do well compared to other developed economies on foundational aspects of technology and data use (such as internet connections and data volumes), we are falling behind on some more advanced indicators.

The Productivity Commission goes on to say:

Australia's internet speeds are relatively low and business use of data-driven technologies, such as AI and analytics, trails uptake in other countries.

As a report card on Australia's digital economy and the performance of the coalition government over the last 10 years, the Productivity Commission report makes damning reading. It points out that Australia is 26th in the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence, it points out that 26 per cent of Australian businesses have identified a digital skills gap, and it points out the weak levels of cybersecurity that Australia was left with after 10 years of coalition government.

Of course, the most egregious act of the previous government was their performance on the NBN. And we had the member for Bradfield in the chamber just a moment ago giving us chapter and verse on the performance of his government in delivering digital technologies, but he slightly omitted to reference his own record on the NBN. This was a minister for communications who took a fibre network that was going to deliver a futureproof solution for the Australian economy and changed it to that world-beating future focused technology of copper.

The reason they were going to do that—the reason they took a network that was going to be futureproof, low-cost fibre to all Australians and replaced it with copper—was that they said it was going to be much cheaper. They announced it was going to cost $29 billion. Unfortunately they then had to announce that it wasn't going to cost $29 billion; it was going to cost $41 billion. Then they had to announce it was going to cost $49 billion, and then, finally, they had to admit it was going to cost $58 billion. That's twice as much as they originally planned, to build an inferior NBN network in this country.

For all of their protestations about the importance of the digital economy and the importance of government leading in the digital sphere, they delivered a second-rate NBN to Australia—to all of Australia's industries and to all of Australia's consumers. In my electorate of Parramatta, businesses are still suffering from the low quality of the NBN created by the previous government. It was high cost, low quality and a tragedy for Australia's digital sector. The truth is that, after 10 years of Liberal government, despite there being many great technology businesses in Australia, those businesses have succeeded despite, not because of, the Liberal government. Australia's progress in the digital economy has been held back by poor leadership, poor decisions in the delivery of the NBN and poor decisions across the digital economy.

Let's remember that this was the government that delivered us the census fail. They couldn't even ask Australians where they lived, let alone give them leadership on the digital economy.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.