Senate debates

Wednesday, 13 May 2020

Bills

Privacy Amendment (Public Health Contact Information) Bill 2020; Second Reading

9:56 am

Photo of Matt O'SullivanMatt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Privacy Amendment (Public Health Contact Information) Bill 2020. I should start by saying that I've downloaded the app. In fact, I downloaded it as soon as it became available in the App Store; it was a couple of hours before the registrations were available. Like many Australians, I think, I was sitting there pressing refresh, waiting to be able to register it. I didn't start with that sort of enthusiasm. While at that stage I was very enthusiastic to download it, when the idea of the app first came up I did have some reservations about it. While I fully accepted the intentions and what we were trying to do with it, I was very careful to make sure that it wasn't in any way in breach of the standards of privacy that Australians expect. So in the time I have available today I'm going to talk you through what I've done to make sure that this app and the system it uses are protecting our privacy and ensuring Australians can download it with confidence that they will be protected.

As the Prime Minister said yesterday, Australia is winning the coronavirus battle, but we have not yet won. Industrialised contact tracing through the COVIDSafe app will be a primary measure of success as we move down the long road to recovery. It's a critical tool which will enable Australians to get back to life as it was before: to go back to work, TAFE, university and all those great things that we like to do in our spare time and on weekends together, importantly with family and friends. Again Australians are leading the way. Downloads are continuing to trend upwards—we're well over the five million mark now—and this demonstrates that Australians want to get back to business as usual as well as they can. The app is the tool to ensure that this happens as quickly as possible. We know that if that number is to continue to climb people need to have the confidence to download it. It's good to see that, with the unprecedented challenge we face, most of us in this place have downloaded it ourselves.

But there is more to this than political squabbles and pointscoring. Not only should we be downloading the app, if we support it, we should be doing everything we possibly can as individual members of this place to give Australians that confidence also.

Just last week, I held an online forum or conference live on my Facebook page, and I certainly recommend watching it if anyone here hasn't seen it. On that online forum I had Geoff Quattromani, a tech commentator who, like many others in the tech community, has spent much of his time dissecting and examining every function of the app. Many people watched that forum online. It's still available, and many people still are watching it. Geoff is on board with this app. He's encouraging people to download it. On the online forum on Facebook, I was also joined by Chris Rodwell, the CEO of Western Australia's Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Dr Andrew Miller, the president of the Western Australian branch of the Australian Medical Association. They made the case for how important it is that we start this road to recovery and the next phases of our three-step plan as soon as possible. In every community represented in this place, businesses are being hit hard, particularly those in service and consumer-facing industries, and this flows on to their supply chains—the manufacturing and, in particular, agricultural industries. Our health system, which is geared towards dealing with the coronavirus challenge, will also need to tackle the backlog of elective surgery and other health related concerns. All three of those people on the forum supported the app as an effective tool to get Australians back to these sectors.

It was a good discussion which covered a number of community concerns, particularly about what the app does and, importantly, what it doesn't do. Some people were extraordinarily supportive. We had lots of people online, and they were commenting and asking questions of the presenters on the forum. Some viewed it as doing something for the greater good. Indeed, some needed some convincing, and some were downright against, and that's fair enough. That's to be expected. We are at an unprecedented point in our history, so I and our panel and my office work to resolve those concerns.

Effectively, what this app does is take the process which is already in place from our state health authorities and move it from being a manual process, which takes some time and relies on your memory for the most part, to happening on your smartphone. Some people, when they are told that they've got a positive result, could actually be quite ill, so they're sitting there being treated for their health condition and, at the same time, having to recall who they have been in touch with at a very critical and, no doubt, emotional time for them. So this takes that manual process, digitises it and makes it a more efficient process.

It will not geolocate you. It will not share names or phone numbers. It will just share a unique reference code via the bluetooth handshake. This data will only be shared between the two devices. After you've downloaded it and you've been using it as you're going about your business, there is a second step: if you do test positive, you then also have to opt into sharing that data with the relevant health authorities. So there is a two-step process. If you never contract coronavirus, the data is simply stored on your phone until you delete the app or until the data is deleted after a 21-day rolling cycle. So the data is in your hands. It is in the hands of the phone holder. You decide what you do with it and, in the event that you do share it, the appropriate protections are put in place. It will be stored in Australia, and transmitting or communicating it overseas will be an offence.

There has been no more vocal advocate for ensuring the appropriate protections are in place than me. I'm a bit of a technical person. I'm normally an early adopter when it comes to tech things, but I like to pull these things apart and see how they work. I don't just accept that it works; I want to know why and how. In the initial phases, I admit I did have some concerns. I spoke about them at great length with the government and worked them through, and I also took plenty of feedback from my constituents in Western Australia about this. From all this, along with many of my colleagues who no doubt had a similar position, I've become confident that the product that we are delivering has these protections in place.

As a government, we've heard, listened to and acted upon the concerns of the community. That's why this bill has been introduced: to enshrine privacy protections in legislation. We could have just done it by giving an assurance, but we wanted to make sure that we put in place the legislation so that Australians can be confident that it is law. A breach of a provision of the bill or a breach of the Privacy Act will be a criminal offence.

In addition to codifying the protections of the determination, the bill will introduce the following measures: the national privacy regulator, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, will have oversight of the app data and can manage complaints about mishandling of COVIDSafe app data and conduct assessments relating to the maintenance and handling of the data; the Privacy Act Notifiable Data Breaches scheme will be extended to apply to the COVIDSafe app data; the interaction between the powers and obligations of the OAIC in relation to COVIDSafe app data with the powers of the state and territory privacy regulators and the Australian Federal Police will be clarified; the administrator of the national COVIDSafe data store will delete users' registration upon request; an individual will be required to delete COVIDSafe app data if the data is received in error; no data can be collected from users who have chosen to delete the app; and a process will be put in place for the app to be deleted at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and users will be notified accordingly. These are strong protections which should give people every confidence to download the app, and I encourage them to do so, as have I.

We are in a unique period of our history, and we must never forget that. As much as it now appears just part and parcel of our everyday lives, we must do all that we can to help Australians emerge out of this crisis. But Australians are rising to the challenge. In fact, they've been doing this for several months already. It's amazing, and I think all Australians can be proud of what their fellow Australians have been doing. Sadly, though, in many cases this has resulted in a loss of income and not being able to attend work, TAFE, university or funerals—the most devastating impact of this situation. Of course, sadly, there have been some lives lost.

Australians have put their lives on hold. We are doing our part to get back to business as usual in the best possible way that we can. So it is time for the parliament to do its part and uphold the confidence that Australians have placed in it. This is why I commend this bill, and, along with it, the rigorous oversight that will no doubt come in the later part of this debate, to the Senate.

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