Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The aim of this Private Senator’s Bill, the Privacy (Extension to Political Acts and Practices) Amendment Bill 2006, is to remove an exemption in the Privacy Act 1988 for political acts and practices; “to ensure registered political parties are included in and subject to the Act and to prevent the uncontrolled and unauthorised use of personal information by registered political parties and their members”.

As it stands, politicians and political parties are exempt from the Privacy Act 1988, under section 7C, and, therefore, are not subject to the rules and regulations that the public and private sectors are.

Originally, the private sector was also exempt but, fortunately, the Government amended this after the Democrats held them to their 1996 election promise to extend privacy laws.

Politicians should be included in the rules that we expect the public and private sectors to abide by. We cannot lead and represent Australians when we do not adhere to the rules that we have made for them, as this merely plays into the notion that politicians cannot be trusted.

At present, the exemption of political acts and practices from the Privacy Act 1988 allows politicians and political parties to establish extensive databases of information regarding their constituents. These databases do not only include constituents’ names and addresses; they document their policy and voting preferences, party affiliation, political donations and ethnic identity, all of which are used for the gain of the political parties. This information can be collected through newspaper clippings or door knocking. It is also carefully documented when constituents make contact with their parliamentary representative and this is a major problem.

As I stated in the Democrat-initiated Senate inquiry into the Privacy Act 1988, “this blurs the line between Members of Parliament as holders of public office on the one hand, and as members of a political party on the other”, as constituents often have to disclose personal information, such as their welfare benefits, employment and associations with community groups, when liaising with their local representative. This information is provided to members of Parliament to enable them to better assist their constituent, not so that it can be placed on a database to further the interests of the political party. This is definitely an important flaw in the Privacy Act 1988.

Furthermore, once this information is supplied to a political party, through whatever means, constituents have no right to access it; no right to know exactly what the party knows about them, whether the information is correct or how it is going to be used.

This is particularly worrying, considering that these databases contain details about the political views of constituents, especially when political views can change but the databases cannot be changed in response. If these kinds of databases were held by any other kind of office, this breach of privacy would be deemed illegal, yet for political parties and their members, it is not.

We saw clear evidence of just how far-reaching this exemption is when one Senator exposed the name and medical details of a woman who had had a late term abortion to the media. This is of particular importance – people believe that their medical records are something that should be kept private, specifically because they are subject to doctor-patient confidentiality under state legislation. However, due to the exemption of political acts and practices in the Privacy Act 1988, the Federal Privacy Commissioner ruled that the Act had not been breached and the Senator could not be held accountable for his actions.

This is just one example of the limitations that the Privacy Commissioner faces under the existing Privacy Act. In the 2003/2004 financial year, there were three complaints closed by the Privacy Commissioner based on the fact that they were included under the exemption of political acts and practices. Many more phone calls and complaints had been received at the time of the Senate inquiry in 2005, however, the Privacy Commissioner again was unable to investigate these complaints, as the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner has no jurisdiction to do so under the Privacy Act 1988 given this exemption. In fact, the Australian Privacy Foundation has gone as far as to say that they believe the exemption is “unconscionable and hypocritical” due to the double standards that it creates.

My bill changes this. It will also bring the Privacy Act into line with current community beliefs. A 2004 survey commissioned by the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner found that 94% of people would consider a business that they did not know having access to their personal information an invasion of privacy and 93% believed that it would be an invasion of privacy for a business to use the information that they supplied to them for a specific purpose to be used for another purpose. Clearly, there is no difference between these actions and the collection and use of the information that politicians and political parties have on their databases.

Political parties and Members of Parliament in favour of the exemption will argue that the databases enable them to enhance freedom of political communication and the democratic process, but that is only to argue that diminishing someone’s privacy for the sake of the freedom of some is justifiable.

My point, together with the opinion given by the Victorian Privacy Commissioner, Paul Chadwick, is not that politicians and political parties should not have access to some information on their constituents, or even that they should not have a method of collection for it. Instead, the purpose of the bill is to bring transparency into this process and, for the first time, allow the public to have access to the information and correct it if necessary.

This is just one of many flaws in the Privacy Act 1988, which I will continue to try to amend. It is clear that with the passing of the Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill 2006, which allows the conversations and emails of innocent people to be monitored, the recent anti-terror legislation, the lack of regulation of sensitive genetic information and now the proposed introduction of the Smartcard, which as yet has no privacy mechanisms in place to protect citizens, the Privacy Act 1988 is not as far reaching as it should be to guard the personal information of the Australian people.

By removing the exemption of political acts and practices, this bill is a step in the right direction to extend the incomplete and out of date Privacy Act 1988, something that is very important to the Democrats. In a society which prides itself on upholding the notion of the individual and individual rights, we cannot allow a group of people to legally hold information about its citizens without their consent to its use.

I commend the bill to the Senate.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.