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

I think the Attorney has been quite open in the way he has answered this, but it still doesn't deal with the potential problem—that is, whether consumers and businesses ought to have a right to know whether their data is being stored overseas or not. Whilst this is not before the chamber now in the committee stage, is the government sympathetic to, or open to, a future amendment to the bill that would simply require information to be provided as to whether data is being stored overseas or not? I think that is a growing issue that concerns an increasing number of Australians and Australian businesses in that regard. I can foreshadow that, if the government is not interested in that, it is something that I will work with my colleagues on both sides of the chamber to try and bring about.

It would not be an onerous requirement. It doesn't actually mandate the data being here, but it simply mandates details of where that data is being stored, which I don't think, on any reasonable stretch of imagination, would be onerous on telecommunication providers. Surely they either know whether their data is going overseas or not. If it is, they ought to have an obligation to tell consumers that it is, which may, in turn, change the behaviour of some companies to think, 'You know, this is something, from a consumers' point of view, where most Australians would like us storing our data here rather than somewhere else.'