Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Statutory Declarations Amendment Bill 2023. This bill will make permanent one of the many changes the coalition made in response to COVID-19, which allowed for virtual signing of a statutory declaration. This gave Australians an additional way to validly make a declaration. At the time, we recognised that the restrictions of the COVID pandemic were making it difficult to execute documents, so the coalition introduced temporary measures allowing Australians to sign declarations electronically and have them witnessed via an audiovisual link. This bill will make that change permanent. It will no doubt be a relief to the very many Australians who have had to look for someone to witness a declaration. The bill will also introduce changes that will allow for digital verification of statutory declarations through an approved online platform—for example, myGov. We support increasing the ways that allow Australians to properly execute statutory declarations. This is because statutory declarations are often used when dealing with government departments and agencies. We want to make it easier for Australians to engage with government agencies. Allowing digitally verified execution will help streamline the process for Australians who need to engage with those government agencies.

These changes build on the reforms to the Corporations Act that were introduced by the former coalition government as part of our deregulation agenda. These changes allowed corporate entities to use technology where appropriate to streamline their own processes and improve the ways in which they dealt with government. For example, the coalition introduced reforms to the Corporations Act to allow companies and registered schemes to hold virtual meetings, distribute meeting related materials and validly execute documents. These changes allowed businesses to do things now considered routine, like choosing whether to hold meetings physically, as a hybrid or, if expressly permitted by the entity's constitution, virtually, provided that members as a whole are given reasonable opportunity to participate in the meeting. The coalition's changes allowed companies and registered schemes to give members the flexibility to receive documents in hard or soft copy and created flexibility in the ways that documents could be validly executed. This bill builds on those changes.

Businesses and Australians deal with a lot of paperwork and, where possible, we should make it possible for Australians who want to execute their documents digitally to do so and for that to be a working reality. We recognise that every year Australians make something in the order of 3.8 million statutory declarations, equating to thousands upon thousands of hours. In 2021, the coalition commissioned economic analysis through the Deregulation Taskforce which found that digital execution could result in time and cost savings of over $156 million per annum across the economy. It is good to see these findings adopted in the government's explanatory memorandum. These costs and time used are important because we know that Australians and businesses are increasingly time poor.

Importantly, the changes being proposed do not remove the ability for paper execution. This is an important point because we also recognise that many Australians still place a premium on a traditional wet-ink signature. However, we also know that digital signatures can and do allow for more flexibility, especially in remote and rural areas of our country. Under the bill, a person could choose to digitally verify their statutory declaration through an improved online platform via their digital identity. In practice, once this bill commences, the government would be empowered to prescribe myGov as an improved online platform and myGovID as an approved identity provider. The technology pool and regulatory foundations of digital verification were all put in place by the previous coalition government. Again, this builds on the work the coalition pioneered.

As I mentioned earlier, in 2021 the coalition commissioned economic analysis which found that digital execution could lead to savings of in excess of $156 million per annum across the Australian economy. More recent work carried out by the myGov user audit found that the old way of using a wet-ink signature and physical witnessing was costing small and medium businesses and consumers over $400 million in direct costs and time each year.

The explanatory materials released by the government make clear that regulations will set out a requirement for a digital identity provider to be accredited under the Trusted Digital Identity Framework. Both myGovID and the Trusted Digital Identity Framework are coalition reforms which we funded, designed and delivered during our period in office, and we're pleased to see that they continue to deliver practical and economic benefits to all Australians irrespective of where they may live. We commend the bill to the Senate.