Nick Xenophon (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

I am grateful to the Attorney for his response, but it still leaves me unclear—perhaps it is my muddle-headedness from the cold I have. Is there a requirement to notify consumers? If I am with a telecommunications provider, I'd like to know whether that telecommunications provider is storing data offshore. I'd imagine that that may be a marketing point of difference for some telecommunications providers—saying, 'We store our data here, only in Australia, not somewhere else.' I think it's a reasonable proposition that consumers and businesses ought to have a right to know where their telecommunications provider stores their data, because I imagine there would be many consumers and many businesses that would feel more comfortable about their data being stored here rather than overseas. My question to the Attorney is: does this legislative framework make it clear whether data is being stored overseas or not, with a particular telecommunications provider? How can consumers establish that fact?