James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Link to 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.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to hear that those opposite will be supporting the Better and Fairer Schools (Information Management) Bill 2024. It is something that is long overdue, that has been a long time coming. I speak from a long time ago, when I was in classrooms and was a principal, calling for a student identifier at a state level and then supporting in this place, in 2014, the use of a unique student identifier across states, a national system. It was sorely needed in schools when I was working in them.

Let me go into the reasons why a unique student identifier was important. As someone working in a school in the government sector and working with local principals, across sectors, it was incredibly difficult in the transition period between grade 6 and year 7, when families would enrol students into schools, and then we'd get past Australia Day, 27 January would come and we'd get to the first day of school. The way the school system works is that schools are audited on student attendance and student enrolment. There are a couple of points across the first three months of the year where, if a student hasn't presented at a school or appeared there on day one of school, their enrolment can be open to question.

For particularly vulnerable children, that transition period between grade 6 and year 7 is absolutely critical. I saw figures back then where, potentially, there were 30 children between grade 6 and year 7 who failed to transition to high school in my community—30 students who just never showed up at high school. Without a unique student identifier, we couldn't say definitively that they hadn't enrolled, because they could have enrolled in a school in the other sector. They could have enrolled in a Catholic school, even though they'd put an enrolment into the state sector. We didn't have a system to check this, other than having relationships with other schools.

I could ring the local Catholic schools, the other Christian schools or the local Islamic school and ask if they had enrolled a particular child. Even when I had done those calls and could clearly say to an auditor looking at my school numbers, 'This child has not enrolled in the other sectors locally, but we are still pursuing the family. We're still knocking on their door. We're doing home visits to their last known address to try and get this transition happening,' I could be told by an auditor, 'They've probably moved to Melton.' What does 'probably' mean? We're talking about an 11-year-old child whose future is on the line in the first 30 days of high school.

We know what happens if that transition doesn't happen. That child then becomes an intermittent learner, somebody who can completely fall through the cracks. They can get to the end of year 7 and not have attended a day of school. That's a failed transition. They become a statistic as a failed transition.

So the unique student identifier in Victoria was a critical initiative that meant that we could sleep at night, knowing that we knew where each child was—that they were enrolled in a school. Although they may not have taken up the enrolment in my school, I knew that they were in another school and that another principal, another year-level coordinator and another welfare team were taking up the management of that child, which was critically important when we knew that that child was coming from a vulnerable background. It's equally important, in an era where people take children across state lines to avoid detection, that we know where those children are.

We need to know that our systems are actually working together to ensure that every child is getting the guaranteed education that is legislated in this country. This is one more way of putting that layer in place to ensure that those who are working in the system to make sure every child is educated have the supports, the processes and the systems they need. Because we can use this data, de-identified, researchers can tell us how many failed transitions there are—how many children did not show up for school this year—and we can do so without it being a guess. We will actually know and be able to set up processes to find those families and to support those families to make sure that the children do make that transition.

Education is compulsory, but when it's compulsory can vary from state to state. In Victoria, it's compulsory to 17. You are either to be in school or pursuing further training. You have to seek permission outside of that system to be employed full time. Those permissions aren't that difficult to get, but there's a process so that we know where children are, that they are continuing to be in education or training and that they haven't fallen by the wayside—so that the funding that we're putting into schools is going to the places we need it to go and so that we can capture the students that are vulnerable in terms of their attendance or in terms of their completion.

I absolutely support this bill and hope that the negotiations continue around the use of the unique identifier, that what they can be used for and what they can't be used for is sensible and that privacy is protected in the process. But the de-identification of that data can be useful for the systems we have in place—because there's an assumption: we have schools, school's compulsory and, therefore, students are attending. It's not always the case, particularly in vulnerable communities. Vulnerable students become more vulnerable at any transition point. Changing schools is a transition point where students become vulnerable. Even if there's a change of schools because of a family move, young people are vulnerable at that point to becoming what we term a 'school refuser', someone who is uncomfortable and therefore reluctant, and needs supports wrapped around them to keep them attending.

With the best will, schools can't do this work without systemic support. The unique identifier is something that I support and that I think will be of real value in communities like mine where we were given data that suggested that 30 kids had failed to transition. That's a lot of young people. That's a lot of kids not getting across to year 7 who then become vulnerable in so many ways. In communities where that kind of vulnerability exists and those failed transitions occur, we know what the end result is. The end result can often be a transition into the legal system and a transition into incarceration.

There are a lot of compelling reasons why this is a good idea. I wanted to make a contribution today to make sure that my colleagues understand what my compelling reasons are. I believe they override fears around privacy, although I still think that the ongoing negotiations between the state ministers and the federal government will see sensible provisions put in place to protect privacy. More importantly, when it was initially decided that these reforms were a good idea—it's a decision that's been bipartisan all the way through—the fears were mostly around this age group, around the school unique identifier. I commend everyone in this place to support the unique identifier and the way it will support teachers, schools, and families. Ultimately, it will support young people in their school journeys.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank members for their contribution to this debate. The Better and Fairer Schools (Information Management) Bill 2024 will amend the Student Identifiers Act 2014 to extend the system of national unique student identifiers to the school sector. A unique student identifier in the schooling context will be called a schools identifier, and it will allow school students across the country to have a single identifier which will travel with them throughout their education—from school to higher education and vocational education and training.

The bill meets the Commonwealth's obligations under the current National School Reform Agreement to get schools identifiers underway, and it's an initiative which has long enjoyed bipartisan support and has been a long time coming. It was first agreed at COAG under the Rudd government in 2009 and then included a decade later in the National School Reform Agreement struck by the former coalition government. It has now, finally, been delivered by this government in this bill.

The bill sets up the architecture for school identifiers to be issued to school students through the existing Office of the Student Identifiers Registrar, but the practical use cases for the schools identifiers will be for agreement between me and my state and territory ministerial colleagues through the education ministers meetings. No use case will be implemented without the agreement of all education ministers. This is an important governance safeguard, and it is backed by robust privacy protections designed to ensure that any data collected is secure and used only for approved purposes. It's very important that we have privacy at the centre of this to ensure that we protect students whilst they benefit from the opportunities a streamlined and unified identifier system offers.

Once again, I thank members for their contributions, and I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.