Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

There is strong public interest in putting these privacy protections in place as soon as possible, so Labor will not be supporting any amendments that will further delay the passage of this bill. Prior to its introduction into the parliament, as I indicated yesterday in my speech on the second reading, Labor worked constructively with the government to improve the bill, and many of our suggestions to improve privacy protections have been incorporated into the version of the bill before us today.

It is not Labor's position that this bill is perfect. Understandably, this bill was drafted quickly and it has not gone through the usual parliamentary committee processes of review. That is why Labor welcomes the announcement by the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 that it intends to oversee COVIDSafe, including the effectiveness of the privacy protections set out in this bill and whether they can be further improved.

As I say, we do welcome the fact that the government took up a number of our suggestions to improve this bill and improve the privacy protections. We are confident that the Senate select committee will provide an avenue to make further improvements should they be needed, but we won't be supporting any further amendments, because we don't want to see this bill delayed any further.