Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

Briefly dealing with each amendment in turn, the government believes amendment (8) put forward by the Democrats is unnecessary. Information can only be collected, used or disclosed if it is for a permitted purpose, and the meaning of ‘permitted purpose’ in clause 80H covers the Commonwealth’s response to an emergency or disaster. We think that covers it.

We believe amendment (11) would undermine the Privacy Act. It would prevent an organisation providing information that it is already legally entitled to provide under the Privacy Act. In essence, an organisation would find itself in breach of the Privacy Act simply because an emergency declaration is in effect. The government cannot support this amendment, nor can it support amendment (9).

However, having said that, the government do understand the purpose of amendment (9)—it is important that ABS secrecy provisions receive appropriate protection. It is important to note that the bill only enables disclosure; it does not require it. The ABS will never be compelled to reveal personal information. The government, however, intend to designate the ABS secrecy provision in the regulations and we undertake to do so. The ABS secrecy provision will be dealt with in regulations—we do not believe it should be dealt with in the act—and we give an undertaking to do that. The secrecy provisions that are included as exempt in the bill are significant because they affect agencies that are completely exempt or partially exempt from the Privacy Act. If they were not exempt in the bill, there may be subsequent questions as to the impact of the Privacy Act on those agencies.

The final Democrat amendment that we are dealing with here is (12). We believe a regulation-making power is necessary. We need to ensure flexibility so that disclosures that are not covered by subclause 80Q(2) but which are subsequently identified as needing to be addressed can in fact be protected. I think I demonstrated the reason for regulation-making powers in the previous undertaking that I made in relation to Democrat amendment (9). I can foreshadow that the government will oppose Democrat amendments (10) and (13) as well.