James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

While the opposition supports, in principle, the amendments moved by the Greens—and in fact included a similar call for such a regime in our second reading amendment which the chamber has just agreed to—as I articulated in my speech in the second reading debate, we are concerned about and we should not be doing complex amendments to complex legislation like this on the fly in the chamber. There is a risk of unintended consequences.

I do welcome the minister's statement that the government will consider this as part of their wider reforms. That is important, because Senator Shoebridge is right; it will be very difficult to apply a $50 million penalty to a very small entity, and it will be very difficult to apply it in the instance of an inadvertent breach rather than a serious one. We are concerned about that—and industry and stakeholders and third-party groups in the inquiry process made that very clear, as Senator Shoebridge has explained to the chamber. But, as a matter of principle, we think the government are in the best place to address this issue, with the access to drafting resources and expertise that they have through the department.

The only concern I want to finish on and put on the record is that that process not take too long. If too much time elapses between the passage of these increased penalties and the more comprehensive privacy reforms that the government is talking about, I think Senator Shoebridge is right that we won't have made any meaningful improvement to the cybersecurity and privacy of Australians. It is important that that more comprehensive reform come forward as soon as possible to address these wider and more complex issues.