Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

ERTS () (): As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 makes a number of piecemeal amendments to our privacy legislation. It gives some more power to the Australian Information Commissioner and increases penalties for interferences with privacy. The Labor Party wants to look like it's doing something about protecting privacy, yet this bill is the equivalent of putting a bandaid on an amputated leg.

Let's start with the Australian Information Commissioner. This agency is clearly not fit for purpose. It doesn't matter how much information-sharing power the commissioner has or how big the penalties are; if the cop on the block is so busy with a legacy caseload, it can't be expected to protect Australians.

Let me give you an example of how the commission is currently broken. The commission is responsible for dealing with appeals in relation to freedom-of-information requests. We heard shocking evidence at Senate estimates from the commission. In 2021, 670 applications to review freedom-of-information decisions more than a year old had not been resolved. At estimates we heard that, as of November, 2,042 applications for review were outstanding, with 1,055 older than 12 months. Concerningly, 60 appeals more than four years old are still outstanding. This blowout represents a 150 per cent increase in freedom-of-information appeals over 12 months old.

Freedom of information is about timely access to documents that government wants to keep secret. This is not acceptable. The government is supposed to serve the people. Instead of getting on top of its current responsibilities, the commission is being snowed under at a rapid and increasing pace. This is the commission this bill is giving more powers to and that we are meant to rely on to protect Australians' privacy. Their track record does not inspire confidence they will be able to do that.

Nothing in this bill addresses one of the greatest perpetrators of data breaches from hacks in this country, the government. Worldwide, the greatest breaches of privacy come from governments and big tech. I will say it again: nothing in this bill addresses one of the greatest perpetrators of data breaches from hacks in this country, the government. If they thought the Optus and Medibank hacks were the main story, they're just the tip of the iceberg. ABC reports this morning indicate that logins for Australian tax office accounts, medical and personal data of thousands of NDIS recipients, the login details of individual myGov accounts, and confidential details of an alleged assault of a Victorian school student by their teacher are among terabytes of hacked data being openly traded online. This is government data—data that the government gathers, that the government stores—that has been hacked and leaked, sometimes destroying lives as well as destroying privacy. Will this bill ensure the government is held to account for that?

We need a much larger conversation around privacy than this bill allows. The hacks of government databases show nowhere is safe from hacking, least of all government. In we are going to improve privacy protections in Australia, we need to oppose the trusted digital identity. The digital identity will centralise all Australians' private, sensitive data into one place. It will be a hacker's one-stop shop to steal sensitive information.

We will support this bill and note it is completely inadequate to ensure Australians' privacy while the Information Commissioner continues to fail its current responsibilities and the government pushes a centralised digital identity that will be a hacker's paradise. We need much more than this bill offers. It's a first step, but we need much, much more to secure people's privacy. We have one flag, and it's above this building. We are one community. We are one nation. The individual's security, privacy, freedom and sovereignty are fundamental to a strong nation.