Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In respect of the government response to the Senate Economics References Committee report entitled 2016 Census: issues of trust, I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I am pleased to be able to put on the record a response to the government's response to the committee inquiry into the 2016 census debacle. The report is entitled 2016 Census: issues of trust. It goes to core issues about the trust that the Australian people no longer have in this government, which is not only out of touch but also out of common sense in making sure that adequate resources are allocated to critical parts of governance. The census, I think, is a perfect example of a total failure by a government that thinks that cutting funding to everything will somehow make Australia better. We see it in so many policy areas. The device of the census is so important to figuring out the needs of the country, and to good planning and good governance. But, instead of the government investing in that properly, we saw a shameful abrogation of responsibility over the five years preparation for it. It started off all right, but it really got pretty wobbly after 2013.

I am keen to indicate, in general, that the report offered to the government for its consideration made 16 recommendations. This government noted six of them. For those who do not read too many reports and who are not in the position of responding to them, 'noted' simply means, 'Yes, we hear what you are saying, but we are not going to do anything about it.' Three of the 16 recommendations—around, what I think was, one of the biggest debacles to reach every family across the country—were not agreed to at all, seven were happily agreed to by the government and one was agreed to only in principle. That is a pretty poor response from the government to this serious set of recommendations that was made by the Economics References Committee.

I want to draw attention to information that was garnered by the committee with regard to budget problems and suspended preparations. There was a submission by IBM to the inquiry that informed the committee's development. In the submission, IBM said:

In … February 2015, the ABS informed IBM that it was considering not proceeding with the 2016 eCensus (or, indeed, any Census in 2016). IBM understands that the ABS was considering decreasing the frequency of the Census to once every 10 years and running a rolling Australian Population Survey … during the intercensal period.

This kind of tinkering that the government has decided to undertake with this critical information shows a lack of respect for the important information that is gathered in the census. The census preparations not only were complicated by this partial indication by the government that it was walking away from the census but were further complicated by the departure of the Australian Statistician, Brian Pink. That happened in January 2014, and his permanent replacement was not appointed until a year later, in December 2014. Mr David Kalisch's appointment delay, in that critical period of time, clearly had an impact.

We know that during the period from September 2013 through to August 2016 the government had four different ministers take responsibility for the census—or take no responsibility for the census might be a better way to describe it. We had the Hon. Steve Ciobo MP, the Hon. Alex Hawke MP, the Hon. Kelly O'Dwyer MP and, finally, the Hon. Michael McCormack MP. You have to have a bit of compassion for the Hon. Michael McCormack, the member for Riverina, because he just got landed with it at the end after the others had all ignored it and failed for a very long time. I know that the constant moving around of responsibilities and people that we have seen within the government is a very significant problem. We are on to our third health minister. Nobody is actually dedicated to doing the hard work that is involved in the good governance of this country.

I will go to a couple of the recommendations that the government has only agreed to in principle or has not agreed to. Recommendation 3 goes to the heart of the issue that concerns Australians about the integrity of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the collection of the census data. Recommendation 3 from the committee said:

The committee recommends that the ABS publicly commit to reporting any breach of census related data to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner within one week of becoming aware of the breach.

That seems eminently sensible, like the other 15 recommendations of the reference committee. Unfortunately, this was only agreed to in principle. It is basically a wave and a nod saying, 'Well, maybe.' The qualifier the government has come up with, after everybody has gone through what they have gone through with the census debacle, with concerns about data safety and management, and with so many other failures of technology that they have presided over, is this:

Privacy incidents that are identified, and are considered in scope of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's (OAIC) guidelines for the notification of data breaches, are reported by the ABS as soon as practicable to the OAIC. In some cases, it may not be possible to assess a potential breach within one week of identification.

That is just not good enough. It shows a failure to understand the importance of investing in systems and processes that meet those standards. I think Australians would agree that, if there has been a breach of important data that is related to them, a week is quite a long period of time these days for them to be identified and notified. Certainly, that accountability should be much higher in line with the recommendations by the committee.

In terms of recommendations that were not agreed, I will go to that later recommendations in the report. Recommendation 16, recommended:

… that the responsible minister act as a matter of urgency to assist the ABS in filling senior positions left vacant for greater than 6 months.

Clearly, the failure to have adequate leadership at the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics had a very negative impact. Their response was: it is not their role, except in the appointment of the Australian Statistician. That they did such a slow and terrible job with that reveals again a lack of care and a lack of interest in doing the work that needs to be done.

Another important recommendation that was noted, was: 'The minister should seek six-monthly briefings on the progress of census preparations.' That seems a sensible recommendation, given how badly they failed and the fact that they had so many ministers take responsibility. If these six monthly briefings had been happening we might have been able to get to the heart of the problem: the fact that IBM did not have the capacity to do the job on 9 August. We would have got there if we had had better briefings. The sad thing is that this recommendation has only been 'noted'. It is not 'for action', not 'agreed'—no responsibility accepted for this significant failure.

In the report the committee, at the end of chapter 6 entitled 'The conduct of the 2016 census', made these claims:

Criticisms made with the benefit of hindsight must necessarily be tempered, but there appears to have been significant and obvious oversights in the preparation of the eCensus. IBM's failure to have tested a router restart, or have a backup synchronised and in place, appears to have been significant contributing factors to the failure of the eCensus on 9 August.

Despite that sort of a comment in the report and concerns that were raised in chapter 7, 'Census 2016: the morning after', which reported submissions to the committee from groups as diverse as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry—the council expressed the concern of many census users when they said:

As a community, we are very concerned at the possibility that the events leading up to, during and following census night might have a detrimental effect on the quality of the 2016 Census data, potentially impacting negatively on our ability to plan for current and future service provision and need in our community.

We have seen throughout the day a complete disregard for good government practice, and we see it again in the response to this important report from the Senate Economics References Committee—that is, a failure to adequately take into account the recommendations of the committee.