Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—In continuation, Labor supports these reforms. The competition benefits are clear. It's time to act. But it's important to know that the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2019 is not the end of the line. It simply establishes a framework for consumers to access and transfer data between businesses. It's not a comprehensive framework for controlling your personal information, whether that be personal information held by banks or other financial institutions or personal information more broadly.

More needs to be done to improve the ability of ordinary Australians to control their data and their privacy. The ACCC's recent digital platforms inquiry supported a range of improvements to privacy protections. Firstly, it recommended giving consumers a right to delete across the economy—that is, allowing them to require data holders to erase their personal information; secondly, it recommended introducing rights for individuals to bring court actions against organisations that violate their privacies; thirdly, it recommended raising penalties for breaches of the Privacy Act; fourthly, it recommended strengthening consent and notification requirements; and, fifthly, it recommended prohibiting unfair contracts. We would encourage the government to consider each of these recommendations to help build a safer information economy. We would go further and say that it is absolutely essential that legislation be brought before the House to enact the recommendations of the excellent report of the ACCC.

We're also concerned about the existence of what is known within the sector as screen-scraping technologies. Some financial service companies are asking customers to provide them with sensitive login information, often in breach of the terms of service of their originating financial institution, and they are thereby scraping the data off their screens. The purpose is not necessarily nefarious; in fact, they are doing this in the absence of any other regime which enables the authorised transfer of data from one financial institution to another or to an intermediary. What we say is that something needs to be done which would further regulate or preclude these sorts of technologies. We shouldn't do this precipitously, but we now have, through this bill, a regime—a code, if you like—for dealing with the transfer of data within and between financial institutions, including banks. It should be seen as a complete code. If more needs to be done to deal with these other technologies then we will be, and are, calling on the government to act in this space.

More needs to be done to ensure that vulnerable consumers are not locked out of mainstream financial systems. All Australians deserve to be included within the economy. All Australians deserve to have access to credit services. We expect that the ACCC will work hard to prevent predatory lenders and other fringe financial services from using the consumer data right reforms or the absence of extensive coverage in other areas not covered by this bill to discriminate against or otherwise harm customers and target the most vulnerable of consumers. We will be watching carefully. We'll be supporting the legislation in this House and in the other place, but we will be watching carefully. We believe this bill, as important as it is, is not the last word on the matter. We commend the legislation to the House.

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