Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022. The legislation implements the next step of reforms spearheaded by the former coalition government to roll out the consumer data right—protecting consumers, reducing red tape, improving cyber-resilience and supporting digital innovation in the delivery of core business functions.

Whilst the coalition will be supporting this bill, we do have some concerns about the pace of reform, the imposts on business and the consultation with business. We are concerned that the government isn't listening to Australian businesses about the challenges that may stem from this reform, and we're concerned that the government may risk this substantive and important reform by failing to make sure that it's paced the right way, that it avoids unreasonable imposts on business that put at risk the reform being done well and that risk the social licence of the reform, because that's hugely important in the consumer data right. We strongly encourage the government to work with small business and consumers. Bring them along in the process. Don't leave them behind, because this has a lot of good things it can deliver for Australia—important reforms for Australia. What we don't need is a botched implementation.

The consumer data right is a very significant economic and consumer-centric reform. Crucially, it empowers consumers to share data that businesses hold about them with accredited and trusted recipients to help them to derive direct benefits. This is all about making sure that we acknowledge that the best regulator of any industry is the customer. The customer knows what they want. The customer is the one that understands better than anybody else the product or the service that they're buying. The customer understands their own circumstances in a way government and a government regulator here in Canberra can never know. So making the customer more powerful in the relationship with the service provider or goods provider is crucial to strengthening the power of that consumer to get what they want and making sure those competitive forces in the economy that we all want to see succeeding succeed and deliver to customers what they want. This is where competition policy is moving. This is where productivity in this country needs to move. It's why, right from the start, I was a very strong supporter of this. In fact, I brought in some of the early reforms in this area and worked on them as digital minister many years ago. It's good to see a bipartisan approach to getting on with this job.

The CDR was launched in the banking sector in July 2020 to give consumers and small businesses more power over their data so as to be able to compare and switch banking products, meaning a consumer could switch easily. One of the great barriers to a customer being empowered and getting a better deal is the challenge in moving their data. Not only does the CDR enable consumers to benefit from their data, it spurs the creation of new tech companies and innovative products and services. Basically, it reduces the barriers to new entrants, and we know from history that that delivers a better outcome. It also ensures that consumers are better informed. With a consumer data right, we know that products and services can be tailored to a consumer, and they can know in advance exactly what they're getting.

Importantly, the consumer data right is an opt-in service. That is absolutely crucial. It was part of the design right from the start. It's not compulsory. It's an opt-in service that gives you the choice about whether to share your data, with full visibility of who it's being shared with and the purpose of the sharing. It can make it easier for consumers to compare products and services, as I said, and that comparison of products and services is very important for competition and accountability. This ensures that the consumer is the regulator of industries. We don't need all sorts of other red tape, and we don't need bureaucrats in Canberra trying to do that regulation when customers can do it themselves. It will give customers access to better-value and improved services and will assist financial and cash flow management. The consumer data right was always designed to grow over time. In government, we pursued expansion into the banking sector through open banking, the energy sector, open finance and into telecommunications.

The bill furthers the implementation and rollout of the CDR by introducing action-initiation reforms, which would enable CDR consumers to direct accredited persons to instruct on actions on their behalf, using the CDR framework. These actions could include making a payment, opening and closing accounts, switching providers and updating personal details, such as an address, across providers. The tell-me-once feature, which we've all wanted when we move home—we all want to be able to ensure that we tell someone once that we've moved and have it flow through to all service providers, and we can avoid a hell of a lot of red tape in our lives. That's where we need to go. It will enable consumers to go to a single service provider and say, 'Please update all of my accounts.'

The measures expand the CDR from a data-sharing scheme to a scheme that allows consumers to act on information they receive. They put in place provisions that provide consumers with the rights to initiate actions, the minister with the power to create rules regarding and to establish various definitions, obligations and protections for proposed third-party-action service providers. The bill implements recommendation 4 of the Inquiry into Future Directions for the Consumer Data Right in 2020 to strengthen and deepen its functionality. The recommendation was accepted by the previous coalition government in its official government response in December 2021. It cuts right across our economy.

Rushing the implementation of the CDR with unrealistic timelines that could risk implementation failures and create exposures for businesses and their customers must be avoided. It's particularly important that the impact that the CDR may have on small businesses is right at the front of the government's and the bureaucracy's thinking on how this is rolled out. Small businesses don't have the resources of big employers. Done wrongly, this could wipe out small businesses and reduce competition, for an initiative that is actually designed to improve competition and contestability. Expanding the CDR needs to be done correctly, but it needs to be the beginning, not the end, of reducing red tape, supporting deregulation and putting the customer in charge of getting the best possible outcome for their needs. I commend this bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.