Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Digital Readiness and Other Measures) Bill 2016, which aims to make the Department of Veterans' Affairs digitally ready. As we have heard from other speakers, anything that we do in Veterans' Affairs must have, front, centre and at its heart, the desire to make the lives of veterans easier and simpler. This is because they have contributed so much to this nation and, in many cases, have fought in wars and put their lives at risk in order for us to live the wonderful lives that we do in this wonderful nation of Australia, this democratic and egalitarian country.

But I am very concerned when I look at the track record of the current government and the horrendous disasters that have taken place—the different IT systems and the different make-up of Centrelink et cetera. One does not have to go too far back to remember the new system that was put in place for people to do their census online—what a disaster that was. Then there was the tax office outage that took place earlier this year, which was a total disaster. No-one has yet given us an answer about that. There is also the Centrelink disaster, with the robo-calls, and the new IT system that is clearly not working.

So I hope that this will work, because our veterans deserve a digitally-ready system. I hope it will not be like those examples of mistakes that I just gave. They were absolutely disastrous, I think—especially the census. We still not have gotten to the bottom of that to find out why that happened and what took place in their new IT system. I hope that will not be the case with this particular change that is being made. As I said, our service men and women have faced complex challenges, and it is not right that veterans face complicated and difficult-to-understand systems. That is why this system will be better, hopefully. It is not right that they face difficult systems and processes to deal with some of these challenges. So I welcome anything that addresses this problem. As I said, I do have my doubts, but I hope that this will work.

I am incredibly lucky, as all of us are in this place, to have a number of veterans groups in my electorate. I visit them and speak with them on a regular basis. For example, I have the Plympton Glenelg RSL, the Seaton Park RSL, the Henley & Grange RSL, the Hilton RSL and the Edwardstown RSL in my electorate. Another great group in my electorate that does some magnificent work for veterans is the William Kibby VC Veterans Shed. All these groups will benefit from this new system. A lot of the groups that I have just mentioned—the RSLs and the William Kibby VC Veterans Shed—do great work. They assist with the welfare issues of their members, the veterans. They assist with pension issues and even assist people in employment and with complications that arise out of dealings with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Specifically, the William Kibby VC Veterans Shed is a great example of people helping veterans. The William Kibby VC Veterans Shed is an initiative of a fantastic veteran in my electorate, Barry Heffernan. He is a Vietnam vet and a passionate advocate and supporter of our great service men and women. He started this wonderful shed. It was the first veterans shed registered with the Australian Men's Shed Association. It is specifically intended for veterans of all conflicts and for anyone who served in an Australian uniform, regardless of whether or not they saw operational service.

The aim of this particular veterans shed is to create and maintain an environment for veterans and ex-service personnel where concerns, past traumas, health issues and welfare issues can be discussed with other veterans who have empathy and understanding from similar life experiences in operational areas and in different areas of our Defence Force. Barry Heffernan is well known in the veteran community. He travels regularly across the country, assisting veterans and even contributing to Senate inquiries and other inquiries.

In addition to offering advocacy and support to veterans and their families, the veterans shed at Glenelg offers veterans the opportunity to learn new skills and put their existing skills to good use. They have woodworking classes. They have a great shed. They build wooden toys. They have lathes. They are constantly looking for people to assist, to help. They do great work. It shows real community spirit and an engagement with the community, which they do so well.

Veterans have given an incredible service to Australia, and it is humbling to see these ex-service men and women continuing to give back to the community. It is therefore our job as members of parliament, as elected representatives in this place, to listen to these men and women and address their concerns. This bill will hopefully assist by making legislative change in support of planned business and ICT reforms that will reduce processing times and automate and streamline existing processes. This is a good starting point. Let us hope that this system does work and does not follow in the footsteps of those other three examples that I gave: the census debacle, the Centrelink robo-IT system and the outage at the tax office earlier this year.

Labor is always supportive of measures that will ease the claims process for veterans when dealing with the Department of Veterans' Affairs. This bill has three schedules. Schedule 1 is designed to authorise the use of computer programs to make decisions and determinations, exercise powers or comply with obligations, amongst other things. The aim of this is to significantly improve services for veterans and their families by re-engineering the department's business processes. Specifically, it will hopefully reduce claims processing times and automate and streamline existing processes.

It will also deal with the disclosure of information about a particular case, or class of cases, if it is considered in the public interest to do so. This would use a similar tool to the one which the Department of Human Services uses when it believes it needs to correct the record on false or misleading information. This takes me back to where we are with Centrelink. Let's hope that the debacle there is not repeated here, because our veterans deserve much better than we have seen for Centrelink clients. Examples of the circumstances in which the department has advised it might be appropriate for the secretary to disclose information about a case or class of cases—and we had some concerns about this—include: where there is a threat to life, health or welfare; for the enforcement of laws in relation to proceeds of crime orders; mistakes of fact; and other situations. The final schedule is going to update provisions to take account of changes to drafting precedents and practices.

Schedules 1 and 3 are broadly supported. The reason that we sent the bill to committee is that our side wanted to ensure that everyone understood the purpose of this bill and why this bill was necessary, and to ensure that it actually addressed the real problems faced by veterans accessing the services that are there for them. In particular, the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee was to look closely at schedule 2 and the criteria and circumstances that would allow the Secretary of the Department of Veterans' Affairs to make publicly available the personal information of veterans and ex-service personnel. This could clearly be seen as a problem for some vets. When we are releasing public information we want to be absolutely sure that it is for the reasons I outlined earlier. We wanted to ensure that ex-service and veterans' organisations were able to raise their concerns about the bill if they had any.

It is pleasing to note that ex-service and veterans' organisations agreed that there were overwhelming beneficial outcomes to ensuring DVA has the ability to move to a digital platform. Organisations were also generally supportive of schedule 2 of the bill, noting that such disclosures are done in consultation with the department and only if or when it is in the public's interest to do so. I outlined when it was in the public interest to do so earlier in my speech.

However, some concerns remain in respect of two provisions. There is no doubt that some circumstances outlined in the bill make it appropriate to share personal information, especially with other federal and state agencies in circumstances relating to crime. However, we on this side feel it is necessary to ensure that measures are put in place to protect against misinformation and mistake of fact. In addition, the provisions of schedule 2 could unnecessarily exacerbate the claims process and undermine the confidence of those involved should they be used negligibly. This is the last thing that veterans need to deal with on top of all the other issues they have to deal with.

As a result, there were four recommendations that came out of the Senate committee's work. We heard about them earlier. The committee's first recommendation was that the Department of Veterans' Affairs consult with the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on the content of the minister's regulations before they are finalised and introduced in the parliament. The second recommendation was that the Department of Veterans' Affairs undertake a privacy impact assessment of the regulations and that the completed assessment be made public. The third recommendation was that the bill be amended to include a mandatory review of the implementation of the legislation and accompanying regulations two years from the commencement date. The fourth recommendation was that the bill be passed.

Labor welcomes the fact that the government has agreed to each of these recommendations. This includes making amendments to review the bill in two years. It has already begun consultation with the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Australian Information Commissioner. I am fairly comfortable, as all of us on this side are, with the consultation of the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Australian Information Commissioner to finalise the instrument.

We on this side will continue to work with the minister—we heard our shadow minister speak on this earlier—to ensure these recommendations are adhered to. It is important that we get this right, as I said, because veterans do not deserve to go through the things that some of the people on Centrelink have been going through or the things that happened to people who tried to log on the night of the census or who tried to deal with the Taxation Office when they had their outage. These are three examples of how, when we transitioned to a different IT system, it went horribly, horribly wrong. I do not wish to see the people who have fought in our wars, served in uniform and who are there to protect us and doing everything correctly, giving up their time and, in many cases, their lives be mucked around by another system that has perhaps not been implemented correctly.

So I welcome this bill and I ask the department and the minister to do everything possible so that we do not have a repeat of the blunders in IT transitions that we have seen in the past. We should be doing everything in our power to ensure that the processes our veterans have to use to access services do not further complicate their lives and make their lives more difficult. When they have served, they have made our lives better. We live these wonderful lives here in this great nation because of the veterans who have fought in previous wars and basically moulded the country into what it is today. We want to do everything we possibly can to make their lives better.

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