Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023 and the Identity Verification Services (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2023. This legislation came forward in strange circumstances and was rushed into this place without warning.

No-one knew it was coming, and certainly a major stakeholder in this area, that I had spoken to some time ago, was not aware that this legislation was coming; it was a shock to them. And it left many questions unanswered. But what it does do is deal with something very fundamental: the Document Verification Service that underpins the operation of many of our anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism-financing laws, and it also deals with like services.

As we made clear in the other place, we have no fundamental objection to putting those services onto a statutory footing. Let's go through, though, what those services are.

The Document Verification Service has been in operation since at least 2009 and open to the private sector since 2014. It is used by the Commonwealth, by state and territory government agencies and by the private sector to confirm that the details on a person's identity document, such as a driver's licence or passport, match the original record held by the government. The Face Verification Service allows a person's face to be biometrically matched to their driver's licence or passport photo. The Face Verification Service is currently in use and only used by Commonwealth agencies—for example, to set up a myGov account. The Face Identification Service will be a service which enhances law enforcement—in particular, in relation to undercover police—and will crossmatch photos biometrically against driver's licence photos to find potential matches. The Face Identification Service will be used solely to protect lawfully assumed identities. The driver's licence photos are provided by states and territories through a database called the National Driver Licence Facial Recognition Solution.

As I have already indicated, the coalition has never had an in-principle concern with putting these services on a legislative basis. The coalition is now in a position where we, on this side, can support the legislation, because of the very significant concessions that have been made by the government.

In that regard, I want to particularly call out the work of Senator Scarr. Senator Scarr led the coalition efforts in the inquiry into this bill, and his excoriating additional comments make clear that, as it was presented to the parliament, there were very significant shortfalls in the bill that the Attorney-General of Australia wanted us to agree to. Senator Scarr called for the bill to be rewritten to address his significant concerns.

I am pleased that the government has taken up Senator Scarr's work and has seen it as a wake-up call to indeed remedy the deficiencies that were in the bill that were initially presented to the parliament. In fact, in the wake of Senator Scarr's work, the Attorney-General's office reached out to engage with us on the passage of this bill. The approach was certainly late, but it was welcome. The Attorney-General and I have since exchanged letters about the basis upon which this bill should proceed. The Attorney-General has agreed to implement, as Senator Scarr had set out in his dissenting report, every one of the 11 substantive recommendations in the committee report. The Attorney-General has also agreed to the further changes that the coalition, both Senator Scarr and I, have requested.

The many changes that have been agreed, and the supporting work around the edges, have improved this legislation. The legislation is now in a position where the coalition can support it.