Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Social and Community Affairs)) Share this | Hansard source

I want to place on the record Labor’s position on these amendments, and that is that we are not able to support them for a number of reasons. Like the government we respect the intent and acknowledge that there has been a fair amount of lateral thinking involved in trying to draft some amendments to the act that will actually strengthen the government’s hand in relation to managing the movement of alcohol, but we do see proposed amendments 20A and 20B as problematic.

Certainly the point you raised yourself, Senator Siewert, about the receipt of Centrelink payments not being all on the same day is one of the problematic issues. We also acknowledge that the issues around people travelling and the logistics of having to comply with this regime would seem to make for a very complex regulatory environment and one that perhaps does not give any real sense to the idea of curtailing the movement of alcohol.

We are interested in the fact that, given the strength of the first four provisions of 20A, paragraph (5), the fifth provision, just gives a bit too much wriggle room to make much sense. On that basis, we are not able to support these amendments either, but I share many of the concerns that you have raised and I will be interested to hear from the minister about the issue of data management: what information is being collected, how is it going to be stored, how long is it going to be stored, who is going to be able to have access to it, what are the privacy considerations around data management and has the government considered the issues of protecting the privacy of individuals who purchase alcohol? I am thinking, for example, of young women in a store who might have to hand over their personal details, including their address, and how that information might be protected from people who might not have the best intentions—perhaps following them out into a supermarket car park and then following them home. We believe that there is a fair amount of exposure there. There needs to be consideration of the privacy issues around collecting so much data.