Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Statutory Declarations Amendment Bill 2023. Electorate offices are busy places—Centrelink, NDIS, immigration and JP inquiries, including stat dec inquiries. Paper has served us very well for a millennia. This is especially the case in vital areas such as the law. But times do change and so must the way that we do business. The last few years of the pandemic have fundamentally changed the world and the way we go about our business. Decades of technological changes were truncated into a few short months as a result of the pandemic. It had to be that way because of necessity. QR codes, home deliveries, online shopping, Zoom meetings, Microsoft teams, banking apps and a raft of other changes sent us into a whirlwind as we dealt with the impact of the pandemic. We learnt to adapt very quickly. In truth, there's no turning back those changes. Change is here, and it will only continue to accelerate and impact our lives.

If the pandemic necessitated change, it also necessitated creativity—that is, we had to apply new ways of thinking about old issues. The completion and execution of statutory declarations was one of these. Traditionally, the declarant and the witness would need to be in the same room for a stat dec to be completed. The pandemic, of course, made this impossible. Currently, the Statutory Declarations Act 1959 only allows the traditional paper based stat decs and, as a temporary COVID measure only, electronic execution of the same. Unfortunately, there's a sunset clause for the electronic execution of stat decs of 31 December 2023, hence this bill.

The premise of the bill is that the declarants, both individuals and businesses, will be given three options to complete their stat dec. Firstly, there is the traditional paper method—that is, if people and businesses so decide, there will be no change whatsoever. Secondly, there will be options to complete the stat dec electronically, allowing electronic signatures and witnessing by audiovisual communication links. Thirdly, and finally, there will be an option for digital verification through the use of an approved platform that verifies the identity of the declarant through an approved digital identity service provider.

It's estimated that businesses and individuals will make more than 3.8 million statutory declarations. Further, it's also estimated that stat decs cost around 850,000 hours in total each and every year, and 2021 research concluded that these measures outlined in this bill could save the economy up to $156 million per annum in time and cost savings.

Technological advances should make our lives easier. The bill will achieve that. For some, nothing will change; the status quo remains, but, for others—those in remote and regional areas, for example, or those with mobility problems—this bill will change the way that they are able to fill in stat decs. So I commend the bill to the House as a sensible measure and a further milestone in the digitisation of government services. Maybe, just maybe, our electoral offices will be able to deal with one or two less statutory declaration inquiries.

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