Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take a few moments today to add my contribution to the debate about the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015.

The collection of personal identifiers at the border is an important part of Australia's national security framework. It is important that we know precisely who is entering Australia and leaving Australia at any given time. The purpose of this bill is to consolidate, simplify and enhance the provisions within the Migration Act relating to the collection of personal identifiers, such as fingerprints and iris scans. The bill makes no change to the types of biometric information that can be collected, as this was done previously by the foreign fighters act. Instead it provides greater flexibility for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in respect to the tools used to collect the information. For example, this bill would allow a mobile, hand-held scanner for collecting fingerprints. This bill also makes no change to the 'triggers' that would allow a customs officer to request additional personal identifiers.

The majority of Australian citizens will not be impacted by this bill and will not be required to provide fingerprints or iris scans on entering or departing Australia. DIBP will not retain the biometric information of Australian citizens; it will only be used for identity verification purposes. And, while updating the tools available at our borders is important, this must be done in a way that does not unduly infringe on personal rights or privacy.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, of which I am a member, inquired into this bill. Labor senators of this committee believe that the bill can be improved. I would like to say from the outset that both the majority committee report, and Labor senators' dissenting report, made recommendations regarding this bill. The committee received a number of expert submissions which expressed concerns with elements of this bill, and this informed the committee's thinking. Consequently, Labor will be putting forward two amendments to this bill and I urge the Senate to support these sensible amendments. I will take a few moments to talk about the bill before moving on to the Labor amendments.

For those that are not aware, the field of biometrics relates to technologies that measure and analyse characteristics of the human body for identity authentication purposes. The explanatory memorandum to the bill outlines the nature of these technologies:

A biometric (termed 'personal identifier' in the [Migration] Act), is a unique identifier that is based on individual physical characteristics, such as facial image, fingerprints and iris, which can be digitised into a biometric template for automated storage and checking.

The bill consists of several introductory clauses and one schedule containing amendments to the Migration Act 1958. The explanatory memorandum states that the bill seeks to amend the Migration Act in order to 'implement a number of reforms which will consolidate and simplify the provisions relating to the collection of personal identifiers'

The term 'personal identifier' is defined in subsection 5A(1) of the Migration Act as any of the following:

(a) fingerprints or handprints of a person (including those taken using paper and ink or digital livescanning technologies);

(b) a measurement of a person's height and weight;

(c) a photograph or other image of a person's face and shoulders;

(d) an audio or a video recording of a person (other than a video recording under section 261AJ);

(e) an iris scan;

(f) a person's signature;

(g) any other identifier prescribed by the regulations, other than an identifier the obtaining of which would involve the carrying out of an intimate forensic procedure within the meaning of section 23WA of the Crimes Act 1914 .

The explanatory memorandum details a non-exhaustive list of the types of persons who can be required to provide a personal identifier under proposed section 257A, including persons who are:

As I said earlier, Labor members of the committee had concerns with specific ways the bill is being implemented, which I will outline. Labor senators on the committee hold specific concerns around the lack of safeguards in the legislation for minors and incapable persons, particularly that the consent or presence of a parent, guardian or independent person will not be required. Our comments noted:

… the Law Council, raised serious concerns on these matters, suggesting that:

... safeguards should be implemented in terms of guidelines to make sure that biometric information that is collected is done so in a respectful manner, and also that an independent guardian be appointed for unaccompanied minors.

Labor's amendments to the bill will ensure that when children or incapable persons are required to provide biometric information without the consent of guardians, this will be done in a way that maintains the dignity of that person. In these circumstances it would be appropriate that female officers be involved in undertaking these processes when we are talking about girls. It would also be appropriate that people with appropriate skills in working with minors are those who are involved in performing this work.

Evidence presented by the Law Council of Australia highlighted the lack of regulatory powers of the Privacy Commissioner. Labor senators on the committee support suggestions from Ms Ganopolsky of the Law Council that the matter has not yet been adequately tested and therefore should warrant further investigation and consideration before legislation in the bill.

Labor senators on the committee recommended amendments to the bill that provide for additional security measures reflecting the sensitivity of the data collected, especially a requirement to notify the individual and the Privacy Commissioner for data breach notification, should any breach occur.

The Law Council of Australia in its submission argued:

A large repository of biometric information increases the risk and possible consequences of a data breach. The large volume of biometric information held by the Government will be an attractive resource for people with malicious intent. Notification to individuals affected by a data breach involving biometric information would be essential for them to seek legal remedies and mitigate any possible unintended consequences.

Labor will seek to amend the bill to ensure that where a data breach occurs there is a requirement to notify the individual concerned and the Privacy Commissioner. Biometric data once released cannot be replaced like other documented data. The Australian Privacy Foundation noted in its submission:

The costs of a data breach are extraordinarily high concerning privacy breaches associated with biometric identifiers. Unlike other documents that can potentially be replaced or changed (such as a passport, credit card, or tax file number) a data/privacy breach that includes biometric identifiers means that when a breach occurs the personal identifiers of Australian and non-Australians will be permanently misplaced.

Consequently, Labor senators of the committee believe it is only appropriate that people are notified if their data is breached.

This is an important and complex bill. It seeks to improve protections at Australia's borders and consequently improve the safety of the Australian population. However, while doing so, we must ensure that the biometric data of citizens and noncitizens are kept safe and secure. We must ensure that privacy and data safety are managed correctly, and we must ensure that people are treated with respect and dignity when they have biometric data taken. Labor's amendments would significantly improve this bill and I urge the Senate to support these amendments.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015, as Senator Bilyk has just indicated, is an important bill relating to biometrics and related privacy aspects. I speak because I have an interest in it and also because I was Chairman of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee that held hearings in relation to this bill. I note with interest the matters that Senator Bilyk has raised and I will perhaps come back to those later.

By way of explanation, biometrics are an important integrity measure that contributes significantly to protecting Australia's border and preventing the entry of persons who may threaten the Australian community. Once anchored to a person's biographic information, such as name, nationality and date of birth, a biometric adds significantly to the department's capacity to verify that a person is who they claim to be and links an individual to security, law enforcement and Immigration information. The collection of biometric information in the migration context in Australia has been increased several times in the last decade and this was noted in the explanatory memorandum.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has a biometric program that has been progressively expanded over time, commencing in 2006 with collecting facial images and fingerprints of illegal foreign fishers through to 2010 when the department commenced collecting facial images and fingerprints from offshore visa applicants in certain higher-risk locations and onshore protection claimants. In 2012 the department also started collecting facial images and fingerprints from noncitizens refused entry at Australia's international airports.

That accuracy and fidelity of biometric data is a key issue in the context of using biometrics to positively identify individuals. The use of biometric identifiers does not provide an absolute insurance of the identity of the individual. As such, biometrics has been described as a probabilistic science, and I think that evidence was given to the committee. A representative of the Biometrics Institute told the committee that, generally, biometrics are around 98 per cent to 99 per cent accurate at the present time; however, there are particular issues relating to the accuracy over time of biometric information obtained from minors. The minister had addressed this in his second reading speech, where he said, 'Biometrics are more accurate than document based checks of biographic detail, such as name, date of birth and nationality because they are relatively stable over time and are significantly more difficult to forge.' In his second reading speech, the minister said that the bill would strengthen security at Australia's borders. The minister said:

The amendments to be made by this bill support changes introduced last year by the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Act 2014. The Foreign fighters act, among other things, addressed the emerging threat of Australians seeking to travel overseas to fight with terrorist organisations. Importantly in the context of this bill, it also enhanced the capability of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to identify persons seeking to enter and depart Australia, and noncitizens who remain in Australia.

… … …

Recent terrorism related events in Australia and globally serve to remind us that the threat of a domestic terrorist attack remains real. This bill further strengthens Australia's border protection measures by enhancing the capability of the department to identify persons seeking either to enter or depart Australia, and noncitizens who remain in Australia.

The committee looked very carefully at this bill. It consisted of several introductory clauses and one schedule containing amendments to the Migration Act. The explanatory memorandum stated that the bill seeks to amend the Migration Act in order to implement a number of reforms which will consolidate and simplify the provisions relating to the collection of personal identifiers. Put simply, that means that what this bill was doing was providing the officials, those charged with the protection of our borders, with the ability to better work out who is who, what is what and are people who they claim they are as they try to enter or even leave Australia.

The amendments to the Migration Act to be made by this bill expand existing personal identifier collection capability and provide for new capabilities which will increase the integrity of identity, security, law enforcement and immigration checks of people seeking to enter and depart Australia and, as I said, for noncitizens who remain in Australia. Specifically, the explanatory memorandum stated that the proposed amendments would streamline seven existing personal identifier collection powers into a broad discretionary power to collect one or more personal identifiers from noncitizens and citizens at the border. That obviously is a good thing for government and government administration to be able to streamline seven existing powers into one broader power that could be used in a discretionary way to cover all of those and other situations.

The explanatory memorandum also said that these amendments would provide flexibility on the types of personal identifiers that may be required, the circumstances in which they may be collected and the places where they may be collected. It also indicated in the explanatory memorandum that the bill would enable personal identifiers to be provided either by way of an identification interest or another specified way by the minister or an officer such as a live scan of fingerprints on handheld devices. It would also enable personal identifiers to be required by the minister or an officer either orally or in writing or through an automated system and allow for existing deemed receipt provisions in the Migration Act to apply in relation to requests in writing.

Further, it provided that it would enable personal identifiers to be collected from minors and incapable persons for the purpose of the Migration Act and the regulations under the new broad power without the need to obtain consent or require the presence of a parent, guardian or independent person during the collection of personal identifiers. That was an issue which did attract quite some comment from those who made submissions to the committee for its hearing into this bill and to a number who also gave evidence to the committee.

Finally, the explanatory memorandum showed that this bill would omit certain provisions which are unused and no longer necessary, and that is part of this government's ongoing goal—to get rid of regulations and legislation that are no longer necessary but simply clutter up the statute books.

As I said, section 261AL of the Migration Act states that individuals under the age of 15:

… must not be required under this Act to provide a personal identifier other than a personal identifier consisting of:

(a) a measurement of the person's height and weight; or

(b) the person's photograph or other image of the person's face and shoulders.

Item 41 of schedule 1 of this bill would alter this arrangement by amending that section. Under the proposed changes, non-citizen minors under the age of 15 in immigration detention will still only be required to provide height and weight measurements or photographs, but for minors under the age of 15 any personal identifiers available under the Migration Act would be able to be required.

The bill also proposes to alter the requirement in relation to the consent and presence of a parent or independent person for the collection of personal identifiers from a minor. Section 49 of schedule 1 would remove the requirement for the consent of a parent, guardian or independent person in order for a non-citizen minor to provide a personal identifier in limited circumstances in which this is currently required.

Item 50 of schedule 1 would remove the requirement for a minor, regardless of whether they are a citizen, to have a parent guardian or independent person present while a personal identifier is being provided, except in cases of minors who are in immigration detention.

The committee had a look at the explanatory memorandum in relation to these proposed changes, and saw that the explanatory memorandum provided this rationale:

The amendments contained in items 49 and 50 are primarily a child protection measure aimed at preventing child trafficking and/or smuggling. In addition, the amendments will ensure that the power to collect personal identifiers is consistent for all persons, and to provide flexibility for officers to respond effectively and quickly to emergent risks. The amendments will address situations where a parent, guardian or independent person may seek to frustrate the collection of personal identifiers by way of an identification test by leaving a room where an identification test is to take place.

Again, I repeat that the rationale for this was related to and brought about by some child trafficking experience that the department had, and actual child smuggling, where simple refusal to consent by someone apparently in charge of that child meant that the child could not be properly identified. Hopefully this bill will address those issues.

The explanatory memorandum further states:

The power to require a minor to provide a personal identifier without the consent or the presence of a parent, guardian or independent person, is expected only to be utilised in limited circumstances.

It notes that the department informed the committee that, currently, the consent of a parent, guardian or independent person is not required when collecting personal identifiers from any minor at Australia's border at arrival or departure or in transit from port to port. The consent of the parent or guardian or independent person of a non-citizen is required in some other prescribed circumstances. There was some evidence given by the department as to where and how that would happen.

There was some concern, which my colleague Senator Bilyk mentioned, about some privacy issues. After hearing all the evidence and reading the submissions, it was the committee's view that the collection of biometric information in the form of personal identifiers is an important tool in maintaining the integrity of Australia's borders and strengthening the ability of immigration officials to conduct identity and security checks on individuals.

Overall, the committee was supportive of the broad intent of the bill to simplify and streamline the provisions of the Migration Act dealing with the collection of personal identifiers. The committee, however, did make several specific comments in relation the issues raised during the inquiry hearing. They are all set out quite clearly in the committee's report on this bill, which has been tabled in the parliament.

I mention again, as did my colleague Senator Bilyk, the issue of privacy matters. The committee considered that biometric data is sensitive and personal information and that as such its collection storage and retention must only be conducted in such a way as to minimise the impact on the privacy of individuals. The department actually assured the committee that it complies with the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Archives Act in relation to storage and retention of biometric information, in addition to requirements in relation to these issues in the Migration Act itself. Further, the committee was pleased that the Privacy Commissioner is currently conducting a broad privacy assessment in relation to the overall arrangements for collection, storage, sharing and use of biometric data, which was to be finalised by the end of June. That issue did come up on just how this information was going to be used.

The committee hoped that the issues raised by the Privacy Commissioner would be considered by the government and that any required changes to the current operating procedures and requirements would be implemented, including further legislative amendments, if necessary. In relation to the privacy impact statement conducted by the department in relation to the specific measures contained in the bill, the committee noted that the department's assurance that the privacy impact assessment would be provided to the Privacy Commissioner by May at the latest, so that the Privacy Commissioner could have the benefit of that statement.

In order to allay any privacy concerns in relation to the bill, and further inform debate in the Senate, the committee, while recommending that the bill be passed, recommended that the privacy impact assessment conducted in relation to the bill be released publicly prior to the Senate's consideration of the bill. I understand that that has happened.

The committee also recommended that consideration be given to ensuring that protections in line with those found in sections 258E and 258F of the Migration Act 1958 apply to any means of collecting personal identifiers under proposed new paragraph 257A(5)(b) of the bill. Subject to those two qualifications, the committee recommended that the bill be passed. I understand—and I am not sure if this has yet been flagged by the minister, and I do not want to steal the minister's thunder if it has not—that the government has noted the concerns raised by the Senate committee and will be introducing an amendment that will address the concerns the committee had. I think they are the concerns that Senator Bilyk also raised and about which I suspect the Labor Party, if they have not done so already, were going to provide an amendment. But I am pleased to say that the government will be moving an amendment which addresses the concerns of the committee.

I conclude by again thanking all those people who made submissions to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee and all those who gave evidence to the committee—their evidence was very helpful to the committee. Can I thank, as always, the excellent committee staff, led by Sophie Dunstone, who did a wonderful job in this inquiry, as they do with every inquiry and every aspect of the committee's work. Now that the Senate's concern has been identified and accepted by the government and addressed in the form of an amendment, I am pleased to be able to support this motion. Again, it shows that the Senate committee system—properly run, properly managed—can provide a real benefit, often in a non-partisan way, to improve government legislation and address some perhaps at times unintended consequences. I support the bill.

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Along with Senator Macdonald, I was one of the senators on the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the provisions of the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. It was a really interesting morning that we spent hearing evidence from a range of law agencies, the department, the Law Council of Australia and so on, who expressed their concerns about some aspects of this bill. I would have to say that the majority report and Labor's dissenting report covered off on similar concerns. In our view, the majority report did not go far enough, because the government felt that a number of the issues raised—around privacy, around collection—could be dealt with in the explanatory memorandum. But Labor felt that really, if we wanted parliamentary oversight and proper scrutiny, the concerns needed to be dealt with through a range of amendments—and Labor has put a range of amendments forward to the Senate. And I note today that the government has put some amendments forward as well. I agree with Senator Macdonald that it is good to see, when a Senate committee makes strong recommendations through a majority report, and a dissenting report, that some of the issues raised are taken on board by the government. That is a good step.

The government has stated that biometric checks at Australia's air and sea ports will enable rapid identity verification with domestic and internal security law enforcement and immigration agencies, through portable handheld devices and other sorts of biometric testing. Certainly Labor, along with the government, supports the need for Australia to be able to ensure that people coming into our country, and our citizens leaving, are who they say they are and that we do the utmost to ensure safety at our entry and exit points in this country. As other senators have said, this bill tries to collate a number of tests that are already available under the law, but unfortunately it goes further than that in putting all of those tests together. Certainly Labor sees the need to balance the need for good security with the need for privacy and other issues. In that context, the bill as it currently sits before us, even with the government's amendments, does not quite get that mix right. Maybe there will be some opportunity in the committee stage to further talk about that and flesh that out.

The significant issues with this bill to me just demonstrate, unfortunately, that it is another example of poor drafting and execution by the Abbott government. We often see bills coming before this place which are poorly drafted. I think this bill suffers from that. The government will argue, I am sure, that not much has changed with this bill. Whilst it is true to an extent—there are not wholesale changes being made to the bill; nor are there wholesale changes being made to current practice—nevertheless the changes that are being made are quite significant. That was borne out in our dissenting report and indeed in the majority government report. So Australians ought to be concerned about these changes, particularly when the bill lacks genuine independent oversight and there is no parliamentary oversight.

In our dissenting report on this bill, Labor called for a thorough review by the Privacy Commissioner and, as Senator Macdonald has just outlined, the majority report supported by government senators also called for the Privacy Commissioner to undertake a thorough review prior to the passage of the bill. Both of us called for the privacy impact statement to be publicly released. To put it on a website, you might argue is publicly releasing it, but to not draw it to the attention of members of the committee is a failure by government and the department. Given that privacy was a major issue, I think that the department had an obligation to draw it to the committee's attention through the secretariat that the privacy statement was indeed on the website. To do less than that, I think, continues the suspicion that we already have around this bill.

Labor was not alone in calling for the Privacy Commissioner to look at this bill. A number of submitters to the inquiry shared this concern, a very valid concern of balancing the issues of privacy with securing our borders. We all understand that, but the bill does not seem to cover off enough on the privacy issues. The Law Council of Australia made a very strong submission and some fine recommendations about how we cover off on the security issues. But, of course, making that statement publicly available, drawing it to the attention of the committee simply has not happened and that just makes people suspicious.

Labor also felt that the current obligations to store biometric data needed to be tested from the perspective of the Privacy Act. There are very real concerns about the retention and arbitrary collection of biometric information, concern about the collection of data, its use, who gets access and its retention. None of these concerns have been addressed by the government. During the hearing, I raised the issue of a child subject to a custody order. It could be that biometric data is taken from a child for the purposes of identification in relation to the order. Although the department used the example of fingerprint data, I am not sure how you would have access, in some recorded way, to the fingerprints of an eight-year-old who is the subject of a custody order. How could you have that and how could you check that using a fingerprint scanner? The government was simply unable to answer that, despite having the question put directly to them. We know for a fact that very few children—I do not know of any—who are the subject of custody orders have their fingerprints taken. That question remains unanswered, and the committee asked the department and the government a lot of questions about that.

If this biometric data is taken from a child who is the subject of a custody order, the department was unable to say how that data would be stored and for how long. That is a fundamental question and it is one that all Australians should be concerned about. Yes, of course, we do not want children either trafficked in or trafficked out of Australia, and we do not want children who are the subject of custody orders who do not have permission from parents to leave the country. Of course, we want that picked up at the border. Nevertheless, we cannot overshadow that by saying that we will collect this biometric information and it will be stored. The department was not able to tell us for how long it will be stored, if in fact it would be stored, and what would happen to that information. I posed this question to the government through the department: 'You have taken biometric data from a child who is the subject of a custody order. What happens when that custody order no longer applies?' Again, the government was simply not able to answer the question.

For that child who may have had a custody order applying to them from a very young age and is unaware of that custody order and does not remember being taken to an airport and having biometric information taken, does it mean that will be flagged up every time they come into the country or leave the country as an adult? Again, I asked the department and I got conflicting answers, if you look at the Hansard of the inquiry, with some blurry excuse that that will all be dealt with in policy. I think Australians have an absolute right to know about storage of information, particularly in relation to custody orders and when those custody orders no longer have any bearing. What happens to that information? To date, the government has simply not been able to give us answers to those very real questions. That is a really strong example of where the need to protect children butts up against this issue of privacy and retention.

The Law Council gave very good evidence that it is one matter to collect biometric information; it is quite another to store, to keep and to log to make sure that that information is secure. Again, we were not given any real answers to that. Despite meetings since with the department through our shadows, my understanding is that the committee has not been given answers to those questions either. That question of what happens to that biometric information when that child becomes an adult and whether that is flagged every time they enter or exit the country remains unanswered.

The Scrutiny of Bills Committee also raised concerns about the collection of personal identifiers and that the collection of data by means other than the fingerprint scanner would not have parliamentary scrutiny or oversight. The committee questioned the claim in 'the statement of compatibility that the measure is compatible with the rights to privacy. However the committee makes the point that "the right to privacy needs to be understood in the context that the power authorises methods of collection which are not limited to that which is explained and justified in the explanatory material".'

The Scrutiny of Bills Committee stated that parliamentary oversight could be achieved through the use of a targeted amendment which included appropriate safeguards. I think that advice from the Scrutiny of Bills Committee is good and I would urge the government to take that on board and perhaps look at an amendment in the terms that have been suggested there. A similar view was expressed by the Law Council of Australia but, unfortunately, to date we have not seen any amendment from the government which would allay any of those very real concerns.

The other concern—and this was raised again by Senator Macdonald, but our response to the solution is different—is in relation to children and vulnerable groups who have some sort of disability which makes it impossible for them to either fully understand what is happening to them or to ask the appropriate questions.

The bill proposes that data can be taken from children and vulnerable groups. The departure here is that, into the future, it can be taken without the concept of the parents or guardians. Of course, I can understand there will be occasions—hopefully, not many—when we do have to take data without the consent of parents or guardians. I absolutely understand that and, if I had a child that was subject to a custody order, I would want that to be a feature of our system. But, again, how children would be protected, and how the dignity and the rights of children and vulnerable groups would be protected, was all left to policy. I do not think—and others at the inquiry also agreed—that that was strong enough. It is important that on these matters we have parliamentary oversight where we can really see what is happening, where we are taking hopefully just a few children without the consent of their parents.

It would be easily dealt with if an independent person was in the room who could act in the interests of that child or that vulnerable person. When I questioned the department about that during the inquiry, they gave the example of the fingerprint scanner and said, 'Well, we'll be probably using the scanner.' I would question: if you are using the scanner for children, where is the data coming from that it is being compared with—or is that the first collection point? Presumably, we do not have the fingerprints of the children that we are seeking to protect. It is certainly not in anything that I am aware of, or is this an exercise where we are using the scanner to pick up fingerprints in the first instance and use that as the first comparator? But the department is telling us that that fingerprint data will not be retained. It is not clear and, in terms of why they felt we did not need the independent oversight from a guardian or some other person was because: 'We'll be using the fingerprint scanner out in the public arena.' That is what they said in the Hansard, and that does not make anything safe.

We have people mugged in the public arena. We have people murdered in the public arena. Just because something is done in the public arena does not mean that a child is safe. Most people going through our immigration are focused on getting through Customs and Immigration. Most of us are not watching what is happening to others and, even if we are, it is unlikely that we are going to put our hand up and say, 'Excuse me. Just what are you doing over there?' The suggestion that we will protect children and vulnerable people because this will all be done in the public arena quite frankly is a nonsense.

The government's amendment that I have seen today does not actually meet that description. If I am going through Customs and immigration and I see a person having their fingerprints taken, I would immediately think: 'Wow. What have they done wrong?' Or 'What is happening here?' I think if we are going to conduct this with dignity, it has to be done out of the public arena but it should, nevertheless, always be done in the case of children and vulnerable people with an independent advocate present.

It is not a hard ask to have an independent person present. If we are serious about protecting the rights of children—all of their rights: their right to safety, their right to be safe, their right for custody orders to apply—then putting that independent guardian in place where we are taking that child's biometric information without consent seems to be a small price to pay, given that we hope it is not going to be very many children affected or indeed vulnerable adults. I would urge the government to look at that suggestion and put that independent oversight in. I do not, as I say, think it is too high a price to pay to make sure that there is independent oversight and that a child is always treated with respect and is always safe. That can only be provided when there is independent oversight.

A policy cannot protect a child; only an independent advocate can do that. It is not fair to put the onus of protecting a child onto department officers who have a different job to do. Their job is to take the biometric information and to do that with respect and dignity. It is not their job to stand in as guardian for that child, and you cannot write the safety of the child or the vulnerable adult into a policy document.

So the government's amendment, which notes that the data will not be collected in a cruel, inhumane or degrading way, is a step forward but I think it needs a little more flesh on the bones. What does that mean? I would hope that the government in the committee stages talks about what they mean by that, because what is written in a policy and the process for carrying that out are two completely different matters. They are not related at all. A policy could say X, Y and Z, and there are probably already a significant number of policies in that regard. We want to see actions and we want to see children and vulnerable adults protected.

Labor has three amendments with regard to this bill. They go to the storage of data, the vulnerability of children and adults, and the very important issue of privacy. I would urge the government to look at them seriously. We do support the need for good security at our borders. We do support the protection of citizens and noncitizens, but this bill, the wide powers, just go too far. Labor has got very sensible amendments that we would urge the government to look at seriously, and we can get on and support this bill. Thank you.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support this important bill, the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015, because it has been said in the many debates that we have had in this chamber about border protection and security—it has oft been repeated—that a nation that loses control of its borders loses control of its destiny. We are seeing the implications of some of these things—if I may say so—come to pass in parts of Europe where there are unprecedented numbers of people arriving without appropriate documentation and seeking to sneak into countries illegally in the hope of a better economic environment. No-one wants to see that happen in Australia. Even the opposition have come to that conclusion and are supporting tougher border protection measures. I believe that at the Labor Party conference a number of significant changes took place. They even support turning back the boats now where it is safe to do, as part of a policy conference. Whether or not it comes to pass that they actually do that and have the wherewithal to do it, I think it is truly significant that it is much more humane to stop illegal arrivals and prevent the deaths at sea than to encourage loose border protection policies.

We have a department, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, that is absolutely paramount in providing the security and integrity of our border protection services, not just in the northern end to prevent undocumented or illegal arrivals but in every airport to make sure that the people who are coming through the airport are who they say they are and that appropriate checks have been made—where Australia is protected or has a reduced vulnerability—for those who wish to do us harm, whether it be mischievously to commit crimes against individuals or, much broader, to wreak havoc on a much bigger scale. In the mindset of terrorists, getting into a country is the very first aspect of being able to commit some terrible, terrible crimes.

We always have this balance of keeping up with technology, chasing down the criminals and ensuring that we are in the best possible position not only to protect individual liberties—because that is a significant thing that I am sure some people have concerns about—but, more importantly, to protect the integrity of our border protection services. I would like to say thank you to our border protection officers. They do their job amazingly well. I know it is not all beer and skittles—if I may put it in that parlance. It is not an easy job; it is a very, very tough job. I had a circumstance myself going through Customs and Immigration where I had to declare that I had been swimming in a river. I had to go through the 'something to declare' operation because they were concerned about the integrity of our quarantine services. I cannot fault them in their conduct and how they approached the circumstances. It is safe to say, and I know you will be relieved, Mr Deputy President, that I was given the all clear and I did not have any biological issues attached to my person on that occasion.

In the end, we have to give them the equipment that they need. Part of the equipment that they need in order to protect us is biometric identifiers. I do not have any doubt that biometric identifiers are the way of the future. We see them in personal security systems and in corporate security systems, and I think we have to acknowledge the reality that they are the best method of identifying individuals and providing security. The types of people we do not want in this country are the crooks, the charlatans and the scammers, the terrorists, the people who have lied to get here or are covering up some malfeasance in their past, and the people who are seeking to breach our border protection services for whatever personal reasons they may have. I have this theory that if you are prepared to commit a crime to get into a country then you are probably prepared to commit a crime while you are in the country. I think it is important that we can identify those people who have tried to game the system or have tried to game the system in other countries. This is where what I think is called the five-nations cooperation is truly important. We do have a number of like-minded countries around the world that we seek to cooperate with in the interests of intelligence and in the interests of international security. I think that these biometric identifiers and checking against some of the errors that others have made in other countries are an important protection for Australia.

While I did not have the opportunity to participate in the committee, I do acknowledge some of the concerns that were raised by Senator Bilyk and Senator Lines. I have to say that. My understanding, and I would welcome clarification from the minister when she has the opportunity to answer questions in the committee stage, is that when checking biometrics—for example fingerprints, with mobile fingerprint scanners, which is only going to take 20, 30 or 40 seconds, so it is not a real inconvenience—the data is actually not retained.

So if I am fingerprinted, because I am a person of interest, my data is not retained; it is just compared with a database of known crooks, charlatans or people who would do us harm. If my fingerprints do not match those individuals, I am free to go about my business and the data is wiped. As someone who is actually a bit of a civil libertarian in many respects, I feel relatively comfortable with that. And I do not feel, as Senator Lines suggested, that there is any sense of shame attached to being pulled over by a Customs or Border Protection officer saying, 'Would you mind going through this scan?'

We in fact go through it every time we go through airport security. You run the gauntlet. A man or woman is there holding the bomb detector wand. I try to avoid them at all costs, because I find it kind of annoying really. Nonetheless, I do not feel that they are targeting me personally when they pull me over. It is just part of going about the normal security checks. I do not see much difference between being asked, 'Can you just put your fingers on this pad, Sir?' or opening your bag and allowing them to scan for traces of explosive devices. It is about security. So I do not share the concerns that Senator Lines has in that sense, because I do think that this is a way of updating our border security using biometric testing.

It also gives the department a great deal more flexibility. In some circumstances where visa applications, for example, are taking place in higher risk jurisdictions—I think the technical term may be 'identified high-risk cohorts'—they can use biometric identifiers to test the veracity of a visa applicant. They can also use it to test the veracity of people seeking to leave the country. You wonder about that sometimes, about why that is important. Well, there is the case of this Sharrouf character who left the country on someone else's passport and managed to go and fight with Islamic State and do all these terrible deeds because he was a person of interest in this country. And you know what? If he is a person of interest in this country, I think it is incumbent upon us to ensure that we do whatever is possible to prevent them from going to another country and wreaking havoc there. There is a school of thought, though, I will acknowledge, that we should just allow these people to go off and fight and die on the battlefield of Islamic State. I do not subscribe to that. I think they do a great deal more damage over there and we are better off monitoring our responsibilities here.

I understand the issue is going to be about minors. We have had some discussion about that, and Senator Lines once again raised the issue about fingerprinting minors and asked what subset of data we are testing them against, or whether we are using it to collect data. My understanding from conversations that I have had and from the minister's second reading speech and the information I have been provided is that we are not collecting the minor's data. When we are testing them in that sense we are comparing it with a known subset, so that we can identify the individual if they are a person of interest. So I do not fear that somehow we are maintaining a database of the biometric details of all Australians or other entrants into Australia. I know that there are many in the civil libertarian area who would reject that and be most concerned about it. But, as I said earlier, I have an in principle view that there should be some freedoms for individuals and that their privacy should not be overwhelmingly obstructed, and I do not think that this bill provides an overwhelming rejection of people's individual privacy.

I think the bill meets the balance between the requirements for privacy as well as our national security. I think most Australians would fall into this category and would not seriously object to undergoing perhaps a more stringent screening process when they are entering or leaving the country should they happen to match the description or some identifiers as being a person of interest. We live in a globalised world where technology and the ability to reproduce documents or perpetrate frauds of identity and to change facial features is extraordinary. It is unprecedented, and we need to make sure that we are keeping up with the latest technology in order to protect our borders.

I want to compliment the minister for his second reading speech. He made the point that recent terrorism related events in Australia and around the world serve to remind us all that the threat of a domestic terrorist attack remains very real. There are people in this country and people who seek to come to this country to do us enormous harm. There are people who seek to go out of this country to learn how to do us harm and then come back. We owe it to the Australian people, the citizens of this country, the law-abiding men and women of this country and the nature of our country—the wonderful freedom that we have in this country—to ensure that our country is safe not only for us today but also for the next generations. That means that we need to take measures like the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill. It means that we need to be cognisant that we have to be at the forefront of combatting terrorism, that we need to keep Australians safe and that we need to update our biometrics integrity. It is going to be a constant battle—a constant race, if you will—between those who will use technology against us and those of us who will seek to use technology to protect us. It is a very fine balance. You can always make the case that it is important for security concerns to override individual freedoms and liberties. I do not want us to get caught in that trap, and I am confident and I feel very comfortable that this bill does not do that, and hence it has my support.

Proceedings suspended from 18:30 to 19:30

Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. I am very pleased to speak on this bill because, as we are acutely aware, it will further enhance what we have come to know as protecting this country from the forces of evil which would do us much damage. And it will deter those people in this country who would be tempted to go off and fight on distant shores for ideological reasons which we think are quite fundamental in their context and are such that we need to ensure the safety of our borders.

In fact, the first priority of government is to ensure that its peoples and the people who reside in the country are safe. This bill will ensure that the people we screen at our ports, airports—and through any other way in which people arrive in this country—are put through a system of tests that will personally identify them. With these tests we can assess physical characteristics, facial images, fingerprints and even the iris of the eyes, which can be digitised into a biometric template that we can check against all of the data we have stored from previous record keeping.

The measures in the bill go to address the gaps in our current legislation which remove restrictions that will assist to identify those people who cross borders. This legislation, at its very heart, is about our border security. Law enforcement and the travel patterns of people travelling to and from our country can be assessed—and why shouldn't we do that? If somebody has not got anything to hide or has not got anything of a dark nature going on, then they will have no problem with submitting themselves to these kinds of tests because this is fundamentally one of the most important issues going on in political circles around the globe. If you do not feel safe in your country, if you do not feel you can invest with your family in a country that has porous borders and which allows no scrutiny of who comes and goes, then you are destined for a lack of confidence which will pervade our very society.

The bill provides for a framework to enable the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to counter the current initiatives and the technology used by those who are arriving illegally to gain access to this great country of ours, Australia. Those people will be submitted to security checks either randomly or as a matter of course. We can now check the biometric details with their biographic details and their passports, their date of birth and their nationality. It also provides a framework which will enable manual fingerprint-based checks to be carried out using mobile hand-held devices to detect persons of concern. That is all we are on about. We are not about going after holidaymakers or people who would seek to come to this country to enjoy the vast array of attractions that lie within. This is so that our border protection forces have the ability, when they have someone in the frame, to ensure that they are right and correct beyond all reasonable doubt. It is really no impost to anybody who has nothing to hide. These checks will be conducted at embarkation ports and will take 20 to 40 seconds. In that time the traveller's identity will be checked against Immigration and security agency data holdings, using up to four finger images. That is fairly innocuous testing. It certainly will not impinge on anybody's personal liberties and, for anybody who has nothing to hide, will hardly be a hardship.

I just brought up the issue of personal rights and infringement. The important thing is that neither these images nor this data will be retained following the completion of these checks, which is a very important thing for those who are concerned about the retention of data. As we know, currently, biometrics and the way in which technology has been assembled and the fact that we are able to use and mobilise it in this way rests on a foundation of accurate identification. These fingerprints provide a higher integrity identity assurance, far more so than any identity documentation and facial images. We have all seen the 'Spooks' movies where a specialist passport forger is sitting in some back room with a scalpel cutting open unwittingly naïve tourists' passports, inserting different photos so that people can take on other people's identity. The truth is not very different from those fictions. These biometric measures will certainly go a long way to ensuring that that fiction is not the reality.

Biometrics are checked instantly against existing immigration data holdings held by Australian law enforcement agencies, which, as we are aware, are somewhat beyond reproach in terms of integrity and efficiency, and are indeed, at this very time, carrying out one of the most efficient border protection plans that this nation has undertaken. All credit should go to Minister Cash for her work in this area because since this government has come to power we have had only one boat arrival and indeed there are now no children in detention in offshore processing centres. That is in stark contrast to during the previous government's time, where we had over 600 boat arrivals—one every 15 hours, as we learned today. In an effort to continuing our border protection it is only natural that we reach to biometrics to make sure no people travel, that no foreign fighters come home to ply their radicalised trade in our cities and in among our people and to target any of the non-suspecting Australian public. The minister would be under all kinds of scrutiny if she did not have some method by which to ensure that these people cannot come here to do harm.

Minister, it is opportune that you are in the chamber listening to this contribution because the work we do here is for no other reason than for the benefit of and for the sustained enjoyment of the Australian lifestyle which we have come to know. It is so important that people have faith in what we, as policymakers, put in place for our border protection and for our security agencies, for those people to have the most modern tools with which to identify any risks. For that, I commend you on having the courage to put this forward. I hope that the contributions you get from all sides of this chamber recognise the good intentions of this bill, what it is meant to do. We are all obviously terribly disappointed that we have to implement such measures to ensure the security of our borders and the security of our communities. We do not want another Martin Place siege. We certainly do not want to have somebody returning from a foreign land or somebody coming to this land enacting such a heinous crime. And without evoking all the emotions that go with that terrible tragedy, it is difficult to think that, as a minister who had this technology available did not obviously deploy it at every entry point to this country to ensure that we do not increase the risk of anything of that nature again.

We have a lot of cooperation with regard to this and obviously those people who understand that there is a lot of sharing between countries of details of people of interest, of people who have dark pasts. The Australian law enforcement agencies obviously deal with five other partner countries in their conferences. They have revealed a number of undisclosed adverse immigration and criminal history information of non-citizens and discrepancies in the biographic information provided by non-citizens. So we are already ahead of the curve on this, but our agencies need the legislative imprimatur to ensure they will be able to implement this, to enjoy the full benefit of the technology.

The government amendment extends the protections found in section 258F of the act to any means of collecting personal identifiers such as the new broad power introduced by the bill—that is, to make it clear that nothing in the Migration Act authorises the minister or an officer to require a person to provide a personal identifier under broad power in a cruel, inhumane or degrading way or in a way that fails to treat the person with humanity and with respect for human dignity. These are by no means in any way invasive. As I have said, if you have nothing to fear, you will have no problem submitting yourself to these tests. Also, the government is looking to affirm an individual's right to physical integrity and freedom from cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment and to ensure that all the collection is done with the utmost human dignity.

There is also a provision that the requirement for the provision of a personal identifier under the new broad power is not going to be inhumane or degrading, or fail to treat a person with dignity. No matter what the naysayers say—and I have not heard too many, I must say, on this issue—I think that everybody in this country accepts that if there is technology available then why would we not avail ourselves of it to ensure that we do have a secure country and that we do not put any hazard in the way of the everyday functioning of our society? It certainly makes sense for us to have that deployed.

What we are doing—what the minister is seeking to do—simply makes all of that clear in the face of the legislation. The specific measures in this bill ensure that the government and those people who do the government's work—no matter what government is in power—are able to take the risk out, wherever those people come from and wherever you get threats. Currently, the conflict is taking place in war-torn areas in the Middle East. There is Iraq, and Syria is in the middle of a civil war. People are being radicalised on our shores, travelling for whatever reason to those places and travelling back. The only reason that we are doing this is to ensure that whatever threat comes to Australia is dealt with at the border and not when it becomes an issue outside the border controls.

Biometrics is by no means an untested measure. The technology is well established; it is something that is irrefutable and no longer a fiction. It is something that people can rely on, trust and know that it will be administered in a way in which they can have confidence. They can also be sure in the ongoing process of this that we can continuously upgrade the biometric records of those people who we believe should be monitored—those people who may present a threat or who are identified in a demographic as people who we need to ensure do not become a threat to this country.

The expansion of the department's biometric program has resulted in some non-citizens providing personal identifiers but not others, depending on the timing of their visa application or arrival in Australia. As a result, the higher-integrity biometric-based identity and security law enforcement and immigration history checks have only been conducted in non-citizens.

As I start to conclude my remarks this evening I say that this is what responsible government does with issues which are of concern—red flag issues which are high on the community's priority list. I do not think that there is anybody who could go out there and walk the streets in Martin Place, the Pitt Street Mall, the Bourke Street Mall or the Rundle Mall—any of those—and find that this issue would not be a lightning rod for agreement. Everybody wants to understand that the government has control. I think that the issues that we see being played out in Northern Africa into Europe, with the explosion of illegal immigrants seeking to go to other countries, exposes those countries to a great deal of risk. We have arrested the risk of people coming to these shores unfettered. The minister is seeking for this country to be able to monitor the small flow of people to these shores.

I commend this bill and the amendment to the parliament. I ask that all those looking at making a contribution to support this as well.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make some comments on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015.

This bill does a number of things. Particularly, it simplifies the provisions relating to the collection of personal identifiers. At the moment there are a number of provisions in the bills, which means that officers who are enacting this legislation need to refer to a number of heads of power and there are multiple regulations which they apply. Particularly, it will also expand the existing personal identifier collection capability and provide for new capabilities, which will increase the integrity of identity security law enforcement and immigration checks of people seeking to enter and to depart Australia, and of non-citizens who remain in Australia. These measures will serve to strengthen the integrity of Australia's borders and our migration program.

Specifically, the amendments to the Migration Act do a number of things. The explanatory memorandum says that they:

So, not actually expanding that—

Before I go on to other details around the bill, I think it is important that we address the context of this bill.

One of the other committees—which in fact has been sitting today—that I am involved in is the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. We have been dealing over the last 12 months with a number of tranches of legislation looking at how we protect Australia and Australia's interests. People listening to this debate may be aware of the foreign fighters bill, for example. We have looked at strengthening the tool set, if you like, that Australian law enforcement agencies have to apprehend and hold to account people who go to places like Mosul in the al-Raqqa province in Syria and participate in activities there with the Islamic State or Daesh and the activities they are undertaking.

We have looked at things like metadata and we have put in place a requirement for telecommunications providers to retain a prescribed set of data for two years. They will retain that data and make it available to the law enforcement agencies who need it. That is not only in the counterterrorism space; importantly that information is used in almost all serious crime, whether it is organised crime in terms of drugs or people-trafficking or the heinous crime of paedophilia and the abuse of children. So we have put in place metadata laws that provide for that.

This is another piece of legislation that is going towards addressing those issues. At the moment the committee is looking at citizenship laws and whether it is appropriate to revoke the citizenship of somebody who betrays their allegiance to Australia by virtue of their actions supporting terrorist organisations.

That committee is very active. In the last couple of weeks I have travelled with the committee—with the chair, the former Attorney-General Mr Philip Ruddock—to engage with a number of our international partners in the UK, France and the United States, to understand the extent of their measures to address the threat of foreign fighters, to understand their intent in terms of how the issues in Syria may be resolved, and also to understand how we can combat violent extremism.

One of the things that stood out very clearly, particularly when we spoke to people in France, was the benefit that Australia has in having secure borders. It is no surprise to me that the policies that this government has put in place have not only secured Australia's borders in terms of illegal arrivals but have also been an important tool for the Federal Police, our security agencies and our border protection staff—to have an understanding of who arrives and who leaves this country. Those are quite important things when it comes to minimising the impact of Daesh; when it comes to minimising the very existence of the caliphate, which is drawing people from all around the world; and when it comes to protecting Australia from the return of people who have gone and received training in terrorist activities, such as the use of explosives and other weapons.

Particularly when we met with people in France—their intelligence agencies, their government and their oversight policymakers—it became apparent that one of the real issues that Europe has is that their borders are now essentially open for people to move from country to country, with very few checks. That imposes an incredible burden on them in terms of their ability to secure their nations. Australia has a fantastic history, particularly under the coalition, of securing our borders. We need to make sure we give our officials every tool they need to keep our borders secure.

The threat also is large in terms of the foreign fighters who are leaving our shores. One of the issues that become very apparent as you look into this conflict is that, while we have a natural concern about terrorist activity here in Australia—more broadly the conflict in Syria and Iraq, which is a very complex mix of issues between the Assad regime, the anti-Assad forces, the Islamic State and those proxies who would seek to support the Islamic State or support those who oppose it—the impact on the Syrian population is huge.

Putting our own immediate security aside—just looking at the humanitarian consequences of allowing foreign fighters to go and support the existence of Daesh or the caliphate or the Islamic State—we have around seven million Syrians who are displaced and currently living in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. We have nearly four million displaced internally within Syria, and about 3½ million people displaced internally within Iraq. That means that there are families living in incredibly dire circumstances; there are children who are receiving at best a basic education and at worst no education. The long-term risk is that not only will they be displaced for a long period but potentially they will become radicalised themselves and will present a threat to the stability of Iraq and Syria, and thereby to Europe and more broadly Australia

So we have a great incentive to ensure that we have measures in place that allow our authorities to secure our borders not only from people returning to or coming into Australia but particularly from those people who are leaving Australia to go and give succour and support to the caliphate which, by virtue of its very existence, is a magnet that causes people to become radicalised and to see this as an alternative to the established Westphalian nation-state that has dictated the world order and, in large measure, since World War II, despite a number of smaller conflicts, has provided stability to the world and the world order.

Providing these measures means that, for example, Khaled Sharrouf, who left Australia and went to fight with Daesh, would not have been able to leave on the strength of his brother's passport. These measures would have meant that people at the border would have had biometric identifiers that would have said, 'This is a person of concern, whose records are held by our law enforcement agencies.' It would have enabled them to stop him leaving. We have seen the impacts on not only him personally but his extended family and other people, as well as the people in Syria, that have had dreadful consequences. We have seen reports of the treatment of Yazidi sex slaves, young women who have been bought, traded and sold and abused by Sharrouf, his associates and indeed his family—dreadful consequences that could have been prevented had we had measures in place where departing people are required to have a certain form of identification, that being biometrics.

These tools need to be seen in the context of our security situation as well as the humanitarian situation in the Middle East. We also need to see it in terms of our security here, with people returning. When people come back, it is important that we know whether they have been held on a database of concern by our law enforcement agencies or by security agencies in countries overseas. We need to ensure that when people they come through our checkpoints at airports we are able to positively identify those people so that we can hold them to account for the things they have done or appropriately regulate what they are allowed to do in Australia. Our own security, to a large extent, requires these changes.

Another area that is important, and this is one aspect of the bill, is changing the ability of our officials on borders to take biometric details from minors. That has caused some concern for people who were witnesses in the Senate inquiry into this bill, but what we see is the requirement to be able to positively identify children from a couple of aspects. One of the really disturbing aspects about this current conflict in the Middle East and the way that Daesh is operating is that we are seeing that the radicalisation is occurring at a younger and younger age. So we are getting children in their very early teens who have become radicalised and there is ample evidence that some of the suicide bombings that have been occurring in the Middle East are carried out by very young children.

I completely accept the fact—and we have heard a lot of this in the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security as we are looking at the possibility of revocation of citizenship—that we need to look at children who are caught up in this as victims, as opposed to seeing them as perpetrators. But even if we see them as victims we need a method to identify who they are so that they can actually obtain the appropriate support to help them in some form of rehabilitation, recovery or reintegration into society. We need to prevent them while they go through that process from carrying out the things that may have been imparted upon them or, or if you like, the brainwashing that has been given to them, whether by a guardian or, in some cases, a parent or other people who have sought to influence these young people. So this measure should not be seen as a punitive measure against children. Based on the work we are doing with the intelligence and security committee, if they are victims, then this is a way we can identify that these are young people who have need of the state to intervene and to work with them.

One of the interesting things that came out of the discussions we had in the UK was the fact that they recognise that where a caregiver or a parent is either not preventing radicalisation or, in some cases, actually actively encouraging radicalisation or the conduct of events, that the state may actually need to intervene. We see there the fact that they will take a child into state care to remove them from those influences that are causing damage to the child and from the propensity for that child to be prepared to commit acts as a result of the violent extremism that they have been exposed to.

We should not see these border measures as a punitive measure; we should actually see them as a preventative measure, a way of identifying children who are in need of the protection of the Australian government and the state to not only protect our society but provide them the opportunity for, if you like, rescue and reintegration.

The other group that this bill will address is where there is trafficking, particularly inbound trafficking of people who may be trafficked into the sex trade here in Australia, or potentially of people who are being taken out of Australia for illegal purposes, whether that be for child marriage or for female genital mutilation. There are areas where at the moment we have watch lists for certain people, but this provides another tool. So if a child was travelling on false documents with the parent or the person who was facilitating that movement out of Australia for those illegal purposes, then people who are concerned about them, whether they be extended family or friends, have the potential to find a way for our law enforcement agencies to obtain fingerprints and to match those as they go through Immigration at our borders. So this becomes quite a powerful tool to actually not only prevent young people who are victims of practices that we do not support here in Australia leaving—in fact, in the life of this parliament have passed laws to make illegal some of the practices such as child marriage—but it also provides us with the ability, in cooperation with overseas powers and law enforcement agencies, to identify people who are being trafficked, to pick them up when they come into Australia, again, so that we can identify and hopefully prosecute those who are responsible but protect the people who are the victims of that trafficking.

There is a database of non-nationals from whom, whether they are applying for a visa or for other reasons, biometric data has been obtained by the government and it has been retained with all of the normal privacy requirements that the Australian government expects of its agencies and the public expects the government to maintain. But, importantly, the data of Australian citizens, if it is held, is held by law enforcement agencies. So an Australian citizen who has a criminal record will have data retained by, for example, the Australian Federal Police and that data is available to the officers at our borders. But information that is taken, for example, using the portable scanners, which are being proposed at the borders, will not be retained. That data will be recorded, matched and then it will be deleted. So people do not need to be concerned that the government is starting to accrue a large database that will be kept ad infinitum of Australian citizens. That data is either because the person has a criminal record or it is just recorded for matching and then it is deleted at the border.

We have also had some people question what will happen to the data of minors. We had Senator Lines asking whether or not the government knew what would happen to that data. There was a question on notice that she had asked and the answer was given. I had a look at the answer to that question on notice, which said that that data will be deleted when the child turns 18 if not sooner, so there may be circumstances whereby the data is reviewed and it is deleted. But in any case, as that person turns 18, that data will be deleted.

This amendment I strongly support because it is simplifying the regulations that officials operate under. It is streamlining the measures they need to use. It is giving them the tools to protect minors and vulnerable people, to stop people going overseas to fight and, importantly, to protect Australia.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. I am happy to rise in support of this bill because it is a very important update to our security framework. Obviously our border security framework contains some of the most important legislation that we administer and pass in this place.

Some of the provisions that are being updated in this bill that will update the Migration Act have been in place now for almost a decade. As a country, we have been collecting biometrics data now for almost 10 years. I do think the provisions in this bill provide sensible and modern updates to our biometrics collection framework. They are needed due to the changes in technology that have occurred in this area and also to expand the scheme to include minors, as Senator Fawcett outlined earlier.

I will come back to those points later in my speech but, at the outset, I want to place this bill in the broader framework of the government's agenda, which has been to strengthen our national security framework. This bill does support the broader changes that were made to the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Act 2014. That act did a range of things including address the emerging threat of Australians seeking to travel overseas to fight with terrorist organisations. This bill will help provide our law enforcement agencies with more information and more data collection powers to help them enforce the provisions of that earlier bill and therefore it is very important in that regard. Of course it does also fit into the broader framework of the Prime Minister's National Security Statement earlier this year that further legislation to combat terrorism and keep our country and our people self safe would be forthcoming. This is another version of that bill.

Of course I do not need to remind people in this chamber that events of the last couple of years have made it more keenly felt here the risks that we do face from terrorism events. We have faced them for some time. As I said, the provisions in this bill to do with biometrics emerged in a previous bout of terrorism incidents. The changes being made in this bill are a sensible update to those early changes. They do relate to the collection of biometrics by our border security enforcement agencies.

Biometrics, in simple terms, are unique identifiers that relate to each of us individually that allow enforcement agencies to identify particular individuals. They include things like facial images, fingerprints, iris scans, anything that can be digitised into a template and automated for storage and checking. The department has been collecting biometrics, as I said, since 2006. It has progressively expanded the collection of biometrics over this time using a risk based approach to identify who and what is collected. In 2010, the department commenced collecting biometrics from noncitizens applying for protection in Australia and from overseas applicants for visas, particularly from high-risk countries.

Biometrics are an extremely important integrity measure that contribute to protecting our borders and prevent the entry of persons who may do us harm. They anchor this information in a particular person's biography such as their name, their nationality, their date of birth and add to the capability of our law enforcement agencies to identify that person to ensure that that person is not trying to fraudulently pass themselves off as someone else They are more accurate than document based checks, which can of course be subject to fraud. Also, they can be linked to someone's broader documents, which prevents or at least minimises the chance of fraud occurring.

So far, the department has made more than 9,000 fingerprint matches over this period. These matches have revealed undisclosed security and criminal histories, as well as discrepancies between the biographic data provided to the department by individuals and that provided to other agencies. So they are clearly a very important law enforcement tool.

They have also been used to expose identity and immigration fraud. This includes individuals who have returned to Australia, or tried to return, under assumed identities, years after being removed from the country. Some others have attempted to gain protection here, under assumed identities, where they already have protection in other countries. The current biometric measures have exposed fraudulent and illegal activity in these instances, but the sophistication of the technology used to enter Australia illegally has started to develop and evolve and strain the resources of our existing agencies. It is therefore our duty to make sure our laws are updated to match these technological developments. That is why we are proposing these amendments today. Our current regime has effectively supported our border protection efforts for some time, but we do need to keep pace with these emerging technologies.

So, what does this bill do? It provides a more simplified framework for the collection of biometrics. I believe that currently the government is limited to 12 prescribed purposes for which it can elect biometric data. This bill will replace those 12 existing purposes with a broader ability or power to collect biometric information, in accordance with the purposes of the act and the regulations. Importantly, this bill will allow the government or the department to update and be flexible, as technology develops, to collect biometric data in another way.

I know that there are some concerns that this bill broadens the powers of the executive to collect this information, but I would say that any changes to regulations and the particular application of those regulations in this act by the executive, be it a coalition government or some future government of another party, are still subject to the scrutiny of parliament, including through our estimates procedures. I am sure that if there are any departures from the purposes as listed in this bill, they will be diligently exposed by this chamber. It is important to say that while this bill does provide for a simplified scheme for the collection of this data it does not introduce a universal biometrics collection policy. The department will continue to facilitate the smooth travel to Australia of the overwhelming majority of people who are legitimate travellers and law-abiding people, without collecting additional biometrics. While acknowledging the impact on travellers in circumstances where a certain amount of identity verification is required, the increased collection powers are proportionate to the legitimate purpose of protecting the Australian community, and the integrity of the migration program.

The bill will also address gaps in our existing biometric framework and replace seven existing provisions in the Migration Act that separately authorise the collection of biometrics in particular circumstances with a single broad discretionary power to collect biometrics for the purposes of the Migration Act or the migration regulations. Streamlining these multiple provisions will remove inconsistencies and duplication and enhance the department's effort to achieve important government policy objectives. These include removing current restrictions on circumstances where biometrics can be collected and providing flexibility in the collection of biometrics from citizens and noncitizens who are arriving and departing Australia.

The bill provides a broader power to collect biometrics from noncitizens who have been identified as of concern, after their arrival, and from behaviour while living in Australia. Significant numbers of noncitizens have not had identity, security and criminal history checks conducted under the department's biometric program, either because of the timing of their entry into Australia or because of their method of arrival. Each year, only a small number of noncitizens are required to provide their biometrics for checking. In 2013-14, less than two per cent of noncitizens granted a visa to come to Australia provided biometrics to the department. As a result, the higher integrity identity, security, law enforcement and immigration history checks that are possible using biometrics have been conducted on only a small number of people who have travelled to Australia. So it is very important that this bill expands those instances where data is collected.

The bill will provide the ability to remain flexible, particularly in the face of emerging technologies. That was identified in the Senate committee report, where the department outlined how at times the existing provisions of the bill restrict them to using certain types of traditional technology—for example, collecting fingerprints. The bill will provide them with the ability to use mobile phones and indeed to collect data in other ways in the future through technologies that we probably cannot envisage at the moment.

The bill will also allow the collection of biometric information from minors, which may sound strange, but it is an important people smuggling protection. For that reason it should be supported. As I said at the beginning of my contribution, I believe this bill is a timely updating of our border security framework, and in particular our ability to collect biometric information and it should be supported by the Senate.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Canavan for giving what I thought was a pretty fair summary of the government's position in relation to this bill. Can in indicate that I am broadly supportive of this bill. I do have some concerns, which I discussed with the government earlier today. I will not restate the matters raised by Senator Canavan that set out the broad architecture in respect of this bill. But at the nub of this bill is an ability for the government to undertake, to streamline if you like, biometric testing. Effectively what we are talking about at this stage is the fingerprinting of people at border control. It is interesting to note that mandatory fingerprinting occurs in the United States and, as I found out recently, in Japan, where I waited 110 minutes at Kansai airport in Osaka to get through border control. It was a very long day but—

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not as long as Malaysia!

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. Malaysia is different—no biometric testing there, just deportation. I am afraid that, irrespective of biometrics, nothing would have saved me from being deported from Malaysia. And it is Anwar Ibrahim's birthday today, and he is still incarcerated. I am sorry for the distraction, Mr Acting Deputy President.

I just wanted to raise these issues. I think that the Senate committee report, including the dissenting report from Labor senators, was a very important exercise. There was a genuine concern raised by the opposition about the way that people would be treated, whether there would be safeguards for collection from minors and vulnerable groups and the way that people would be treated. I believe that the opposition's concerns have been reflected in the government's amendment on sheet GN118, which will be debated should this matter go into the committee stage, as I expect it will. It relates to persons not being required to provide personal identifiers in a cruel, inhuman or degrading way. It relates to the manner in which the biometric information is collected. I will ask some questions of the government as to how they expect this to operate, how they will deal with complaints, the level of training, the quality of training, the quality control, the level of randomised supervision of how officers will be dealing with this and whether these tests are genuinely random. I think that these are legitimate questions to ask. I think that the amendments by the opposition intend to do the same thing but are quite prescriptive, and I am concerned that there may be some consequences that are unintended in relation to those amendments that may hamper the legitimate work of the Australian Border Force in strengthening the integrity of our borders.

I also think it is worth asking, in the committee stage, how this will work in the context of CrimTrac. A question that I will be putting to the minister is: if your fingerprint is taken as part of a biometric scan, can it be used for purposes other than simply border control? For instance, if that fingerprint matches up with a crime scene for a serious criminal offence, what would happen in those circumstances? I also note that there was a trial, which was on a consent basis, where 12,000 individuals were tested at number of airports around the country. That was generally quite a successful trial—there were not any complaints—but I will ask some questions in respect of that.

In terms of issues relating to how this new system will work, my concern is that, if it is known that only 'people of suspicion' are targeted, then anyone who is pulled up for this test—if they are a person of suspicion or have been flagged by some sort of alert system—arguably could say that simply being targeted in that way could be cruel, inhuman or degrading. Whereas, if it is a genuinely randomised test—in other words, of people who have been flagged for some suspicion but also people who have not been flagged—then that would neutralise that argument.

I will be asking the government to make an undertaking that, after 12 months and within 18 months of the commencement of the operation of this section, the Australian Border Force provide a report to the minister that will be tabled in both houses of parliament that will relate to the operation of these amendments and to issues of complaints—how many complaints there have been, how complaints have been dealt with, the level of training and quality control, the level of supervision and, overall, the operation of this section. I do not think that is an unreasonable request. It is something that I imagine the minister would get in any event. That would also be a useful basis for the Senate estimates process to explore further if there are concerns as a result of that report provided by the Australian Border Force. An undertaking from the government in those terms is a matter that I think ought to be dealt with in the committee stage of this bill. I think that it would be a useful exercise and one that would provide a level of safeguard in respect of this.

With those caveats and those issues and some questions I want to explore in the committee stage, I support the second reading of this bill. I prefer the government's amendment to those of the opposition because I think that it is broad enough to do what it is meant to do in dealing with some of the legitimate concerns of the opposition that were brought up in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee in consideration of the provisions of this bill.

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am quite gratified by the responsible attitude that Senator Xenophon has taken to what is a very, very important piece of legislation, the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. In the last 10 to 15 years, Australia has been confronted with a very multifaceted threat, and that is ingress to and egress from our country by a very broad range of people with differing ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. What we seek to do in this piece of legislation is to use current technologies with respect to biometrics to answer the challenge that the threat that I have just mentioned brings to the personal safety and security of Australians. Current technology being what it is, we can identify individuals through what we call personal identifiers, store that information reliably and access that information almost instantly in identifying people who traverse across the threshold of our borders.

The predominant personal identifier will be fingerprints, but there are other biometrics—the iris, facial image recognition and so on. The focus of successful law enforcement around the world has been through the very contemporary, instantaneous use of fingerprints. Algorithmic computer power delivering data to the fingertips of the person conducting the analysis mean that, almost immediately upon setting foot in the Customs hall, we can quite reliably identify the person or persons with the necessary fingerprint data once stored and accumulated.

Having said that, at the moment we have a number of gaps in the reliability of the biometric data that we use to identify people coming into our country. This bill assists in filling of those gaps and giving people with the important responsibility of protecting our borders and identifying people who would be otherwise not welcome in Australia the best opportunity of identifying them. We know that we have had a number of individuals both coming into Australia and leaving Australia where it has been very difficult for the department to make the necessary adjudications in the time frame they have for a person entering or leaving Australia.

This provides a framework to enable manual fingerprint-based checks to be carried out using mobile handheld devices. This is phenomenal technology. This is computer power doing a lot of very good work in giving officers at the border the capacity to make a very reliable, almost instantaneous decision as to the identity of particular people coming and particular people going. These checks will be conducted at airports, seaports and anywhere else where it is very important that Australia have reliable data on a person's identity from a security perspective.

We have a very large number of points of entry. Not many Australian citizens understand all the points of entry: each coal terminal where international ships collect our minerals, be it up the North Queensland coast or in the Northern Territory; oil and gas ships up the north-west of Western Australia; iron ore ships; or wheat being exported from South Australia, Western Australia or New South Wales. All of these points of entry or exit for our exportable goods and for the live export of sheep and cattle mean that we have people coming into Australia whose identity we should know of. We should be able to very quickly, securely and reliably identify who is setting foot in Australia.

The problem we have at the moment is, firstly, all of these various sites need to be connected to the network. Then we have the problem of having the necessary computer capacity and reception at those sites to be able to access databases, and we need to train our officers at those points to completely understand and fully utilise the information technology that we are presenting them. The specific measures in the bill will introduce a broad power to collect biometrics for the purposes of the Migration Act and regulations, including to assist in identifying persons who may be a security concern to Australia. I think that is almost a motherhood statement in terms of its importance and the necessary authorities, laws and regulations that we would want our officers to have in collecting such biometric data. It will provide the flexibility to require biometrics in some circumstances—for example, in visa applications from persons who are part of an identified high-risk cohort—or to not require biometrics in some other cases. The flexibility to make decisions at the point of authorising entry is going to be in the legislation. It will allow biometrics to be collected multiple times where required.

Again, I emphasise physical characteristics will be used as personal identifiers. We have facial imaging—digital photography—to get a biometric facial image. I have focused on fingerprints and, of course, there is digitally recorded iris images. These will provide a very reliable and quite flexible and contemporary analysis of individuals so that we can readily identify them from the database.

The bill will not mean that biometrics will be collected from the majority of non-citizens who apply for a visa to travel to Australia. It does not introduce a universal biometric collection policy. There is no one-size-fits-all and a blanket provision. It will provide flexibility to require biometrics from particular individuals or high-risk cohorts. All current circumstances under which the Migration Act authorises the collection of personal identifiers will continue to be authorised under the bill. These are, by way of example, in the granting of a visa to non-citizens and entering and departing Australia citizens and noncitizens. I should add that the criminal element will be catered for here. People who are on watch lists, people who are suspected of doing things which may in the medium to long term be in breach of the law will be able to be identified reliably to determine whether a non-citizen holds a valid visa. It will provide for reconciliation between the data provided in the visa application and the point of using that visa, as well as providing for detention decision making for non-citizens.

In addition:

… the department will selectively collect personal identifiers from particular individuals who have not previously provided their personal identifiers, but who have been identified as of concern after their arrival in Australia, or due to their behaviour while living in the Australian community.

I actually think and commend that aspect to the Senate. I think it is a very, very important thing, given that I think we are on the verge of taking our refugee reception to about 18,000 people per annum. This is a very important measure, and I must say I am very gratified by the measures in this legislation. The information:

… provides greater integrity to the immigration system, protection against the spread of terrorism and human trafficking and will assist in resolving the current asylum seeker caseload.

I pause to say that human trafficking is a very, very nasty blight on the movement of individuals between sovereign nations. Any use of technology that enhances the integrity of identifying individuals who may be being trafficked against their will, particuarly children, has got to be a very good thing.

The amendments in the bill include the removal of the current age restrictions and parental consent to collect biometrics. I think that is very, very laudable and important. Somebody needs to take responsibility in the fight against child trafficking and, if these measures go down the path of providing officers with greater integrity in being able to identify any person, be it a minor or an adult, who is being trafficked, it has got to be a good thing. The age restriction amendments are primarily, as I have said, a child protection measure aimed at preventing child trafficking and/or smuggling, particularly with respect to what we all know happens around the expression 'child brides'.

I strongly commend these measures to the Senate. I think they are very, very sound, logical and strong, and I actually have no qualms about the civil liberties aspect underlying these matters. I think the mischief that is sought to be prevented here is ever so much greater than the inhibition of any civil liberties.

Collecting personal identifiers, particularly fingerprints, from children will permit a higher level of integrity in identifying minors overseas where known cases of child smuggling and trafficking reveal higher risk.

I think that is self-evident and a very important aspect of this legislation which the wider community, I would expect, would welcome.

Fingerprints provide a unique capability to accurately identify individuals that is not possible using a facial image, particularly if the person is a minor.

Obviously, facial imaging, digital facial imaging with respect to children who grow very quickly is a problem, so fingerprints are a relatively stable personal identifier throughout a person's lifetime.

In addition, the age restriction amendments address situations 'where a parent, guardian or independent person may seek to frustrate the collection of personal identifiers by leaving a room where an identification test is to take place'. I think that also is self-evidently an integrity-enhancing measure.

Recent border and terrorism-related events in Australia and worldwide illustrate the need for measures to strengthen community protection outcomes.

…      .

The measures in this bill will strengthen the department's capacity to collect biometrics to check identity and to do other checks to detect individuals of concern. Again, I say laudable, appropriate, logical in a society such as ours. Vigilance comes at a price. Having high-integrity biometric assessment of individual identity means that we have greater capacity to more effectively in a short space of time make adjudications at our borders, which, as I say, are laden with integrity and are reliable.

… recent examples of Australians leaving to participate in foreign conflicts have highlighted the need for additional actions to detect such persons at the border. The example of convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf who in December 2013 used his brother's passport to leave Australia to participate in terrorist related activities illustrates the need for fingerprint-based checks.

Again, I say this is very, very logical. If we can get technology to step into the place where human error—and human error, I think, is very likely when we know the level and the number of people who are going through our borders on any given day, any given night. My experience has been at Perth Airport with four or five planes landing between midnight and 5 am. It is huge burden for Customs officers to deal with in an expedient, cost-effect way, and so technology stepping up to the plate to assist in that adjudication has got to be a very good thing, and this legislation does exactly that.

The collection measures in this bill provide the tools to stop people like Sharrouf at the border due to the higher level of accuracy in identifying individuals provided by fingerprint verification.

The digitalisation of this data means that it is instantaneously accessible and the officer has the capacity and the technology at his fingertips to make an enhanced adjudication of high integrity and reliability. This has got to be a very, very good thing.

Having said that to you, we know that, having touched on the issues of child trafficking, of child bride smuggling and of all of the things that we can see around the world where people are making money out of nefarious practices in the breach of human rights of others, the one particularly strong deterrent is high technology, personal identifiers, using high-powered computers to provide instant answers on a digital basis through data analysis, is a very good antidote to this growing problem.

This legislation takes our border security, our border protection and the officers who administer the rules, the regulations and the law to a higher level of integrity I want to commend this bill to the Senate and say that as time goes by and technology improves we must in this place be on the front foot in assisting our officers with this technology, such that they can do their job to a high degree of integrity. I think this is very, very important not only for the security of our country but for the expeditious treatment of people at the borders.

I spent five hours at Heathrow airport on one occasion, as a senator of Australia. The queue just went up and down, up and down, and I got to a sign that said, 'You are two hours from the front.' That is because they did not use the technology. They had individuals making a rough guess as to who's who in the zoo as they came through. We want to avoid that. We want to have a high degree of integrity and a high degree of cost-effectiveness, and we want to move people reliably through our borders quickly, particularly law-abiding citizens. That is the consideration here: we can pick the bad apples out very quickly and reliably, and we can let law-abiding citizens move through very quickly.

I think this legislation—and I want to commend it, as I said, to the Senate—is a very strong piece of initiative by the government to get on board with current technology. There is no excuse for us not to utilise the high degree of developed, high-integrity, personal identification—digital personal identifiers—in processing people through our borders. We should be doing it and we must be doing it, and this legislation assists in expeditiously providing our officers with greater and more reliable capacity to do what we want them to do.

Glenn Lazarus (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this really important bill, the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. We are living in challenging times. Not only is the threat of terrorism on the rise but the number of people moving through our borders is also on the rise. In 2013-14, over 35 million passengers arrived and departed from our borders and nearly five million visas were granted. The number of people travelling in and out of Australia is estimated to rise significantly in the future; in fact, passenger numbers are expected to reach 50 million by 2020. Given this, we need to arm our border protection and management agency, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, with the most progressive and flexible range of tools possible to manage the identification of people.

Border protection and management are one of the most important aspects of our national security. It is imperative that our people at the front line, in airports and at ocean liner terminals, have the ability to process the arrival and departure of people with ease and speed while maintaining the highest levels of scrutiny. It is for this reason that we need to improve the way we process the arrival of people to our shores and put in place improved mechanisms to ensure that those seeking to enter our country are here for the right reasons. We also need to ensure that those seeking to leave the country are leaving for the right reasons.

All of this means that we need a better way of managing the identity of those moving through our borders, and this bill will do just that. It will consolidate the federal government's existing personal identification collection powers by introducing a single power to collect personal identifiers that replaces seven existing collection powers in the Migration Act. This will streamline existing processes to prevent inconsistency and duplication in the capture of personal identification information. I should note that I understand that the bill will not change the way in which data is held and retained and that fingerprint technology will not retain personal identifier information.

The streamlining effect of this bill will enhance the department's ability to identify noncitizens who have a criminal history or who are of character concern and to assist in identifying persons who may be of security concern to Australia or a foreign country. It will also provide the flexibility to require personal identifiers for visa applicants considered part of an identified higher risk group or for those where there are reasonable grounds to suspect identity fraud. It will also provide greater flexibility in relation to the capture of personal identification information for minors and incapable persons where there is a concern that they may be at risk or where there are concerns about the reason for their travel. It will also enable the department to collect personal identification information from visa applicants more than once.

In working through the bill, I did have some concerns regarding the privacy impact of the bill. However, after discussions with the minister and his staff, I am confident that the proposed changes will involve minimal impact on the human rights of those affected. I am confident that the bill achieves a very careful and considered balance between the safety of Australians and the impact on the human rights of those affected. I understand that the privacy impact assessment, which was recommended by the Senate inquiry, may be available to the public in due course. Hopefully, once this assessment is available to all for public perusal it will address any concerns the general public may have in relation to privacy issues.

I would also like to make a few comments regarding Labor's amendments, which I feel do have merit. Labor's amendments seek to place safeguards around the taking of information from young people or those who may be vulnerable for a range of reasons. While I understand Labor's concerns, I am also acutely aware of the need to ensure we do not impose any further administrative burden on our already very busy and very stretched front line. This bill is about increasing the efficient processing of people, not increasing the work load and administrative burden of people processing. For this reason, I will not be supporting the Labor amendments. I would however like to acknowledge the good work of the Labor Party in seeking to add further protections to what is already a very good bill.

I am comfortable that the bill does allow sufficient measures to protect the most vulnerable. Testing will still be done with two people present, with one of those officers being female. In the case of minors and incapable persons, if a parent or guardian is travelling, consent will be sought first. Children and vulnerable persons will only have their personal identifiers collected if they are selected by trained officers to be at higher risk of harm or a higher risk to the safety of the community. This is essential in the case of child trafficking, smuggling or exploitation.

In summary, the number of arrivals and departures is increasing exponentially. The national security alert was raised another level in September 2014. The trafficking of men, women and children into Australia is increasing and remains a concern, according to Australian Federal Police data, which reported 70 new referrals of trafficking in 2013-14 compared to just 15 in 2003-04. This bill will assist to address this issue both in Australia and overseas with other cooperating agencies.

Australia needs effective and efficient measures to not only allow legitimate travellers to pass through without undue delay but also detect those at risk of harming Australia or elsewhere before they enter or leave our borders. More importantly, we need to be able to detect vulnerable children, women and men who are being trafficked into Australia. I believe this bill will assist to strengthen our country's management of our borders, reduce the risk of people trafficking and will provide our front-line men and women with the tools and systems they need to keep us safe.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to stand up this evening to add my support to what is a very important government initiative in combatting the threat of terrorism that is unfortunately becoming an ever-increasing risk to Australians both home and abroad. So I am pleased tonight to be able to add my comments on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. But, before I speak to the bill, I would like to make some related comments.

Those of us who are familiar with Western Australia and indeed St Georges Terrace would have regularly passed Anzac House, which is the home of the Returned Services League in Western Australia. Colleagues like Senator Cash and I are able to reflect on the fact that inscripted on the wall at Anzac House is this statement: 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.' When I was considering making a contribution to this important bill tonight, it was those words, 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance', that came to mind, because I see much of the initiatives in this bill being about vigilance—not for one moment underestimating the risk, nor for one moment implying that the threat is imagined, as it is very, very real. That quote, 'The price of freedom is external vigilance', is actually not the original quote. The original quote, which celebrates its 225th anniversary this month, is:

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.

It is often misattributed to the Irish lawyer and politician John Philpot Curran and to Thomas Jefferson. I think that quote demonstrates the very important point that, for hundreds of years, men acting independently or indeed collections of men and government have added to this requirement for constant vigilance in order to protect freedom and liberty.

This bill follows on from the foreign fighters bill, the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014, which enhanced the capability of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to identify persons seeking to enter and depart Australia and noncitizens remaining in Australia. In the time that is available to me this evening, I would like to restrict my comments to a number of themes: to restate why these initiatives are very important; to reflect on some of the core initiatives that are contained in the legislation; to examine briefly why it is that biometrics are now such an important modern piece of our armoury in defending ourselves and defending the citizens of this and other countries; to comment briefly on the removal of the existing restrictions on collecting biometrics from minors, which I do think is a very important element for people to be aware of; to reflect briefly on the cooperation and the importance of cooperation contained in this legislation between ourselves and the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States; and to demonstrate that the threat that this legislation seeks to counter is not imagined but very, very real.

At the core of this bill are measures to focus on biometrics—more commonly termed 'personal identifiers' in the Migration Act—which are unique identifiers that are based on individual physical characteristics, such as facial image, fingerprints and iris, which can be digitised into a biometric template for automatic storage and checking. It is important to reflect on the fact that this is not new. Indeed, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has in fact been collecting biometrics images such as facial images and fingerprints from particular cohorts of noncitizens—so citizens not of Australia—since 2006 and since that time has progressively expanded its biometric collection program using a risk based approach, which I think is a very prudent way in which to test technologies and make Australians and non-Australian citizens accustomed to these important security measures. By way of example I would cite the 2010 experience when the department commenced collecting biometrics from noncitizens applying for protection in Australia and from overseas applicants for visas in particular higher risk countries. But, more significantly, I think it is important to be very aware of why biometrics are such an important modern tool in the armoury that this government has chosen to protect its citizens and, indeed, anyone who might be travelling to and from Australia.

As has been previously mentioned, biometrics are a very important integrity measure that contribute significantly to not just protecting Australia's borders but also preventing the entry of persons who may threaten the Australian community—those who are residing here permanently and those who might be travelling to Australia on holidays. Once anchored to a person's biographic information, such as name, nationality and date of birth, a biometric adds significant information and profile to the portfolio's capability to verify that a person is who they claim to be. This is at the core of this initiative. What we are seeking to do is to verify beyond doubt that someone's claim to be someone is in fact their claim and an accurate claim, and not one that is being misused or abused by others. This initiative adds significantly to the importance of our security arrangements, to our law enforcement initiatives and of course to building our strong immigration information for the future.

I note that Senator Lazarus reflected briefly on some of the civil liberties or human rights implications of this bill. It will be interesting to see the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights when it provides its report, not just on this but on other particular initiatives, to find and to explore how government has struck the right balance with respect to people's civil liberties—as I prefer to call them; others might prefer to call them human rights—how privacy has been maintained and how fair trial has been maintained. Of course, that information will come to the Senate in due course.

Staying briefly with the issue of biometrics, biometrics are more accurate than document-based checks of biographic detail, such as name, date of birth and nationality because they are relatively stable over time and are significantly more difficult to forge. Those personal characteristics—those personal identifiers that we have talked about—are much more difficult to put to fraudulent use. As the utility of collecting biometrics rests on a foundation of accurate identification, fingerprints provide higher integrity identity assurance than identity documentation or facial images. We have often heard in the broader debate about border immigration of people choosing to lose their identification documents and people coming to Australia without documentation. Indeed, it is very hard to come to Australia without a fingerprint or a facial image.

Finally, I want to reflect briefly on the very important issue of the removal of existing restrictions on collecting biometrics from minors, because this is a particularly important initiative and one that needs to be very well known and clear to people when we are debating this bill. The removal of existing restrictions on collecting biometrics from minors is primarily a child protection measure aimed at preventing child trafficking and/or smuggling. Collecting personal identifiers, particularly fingerprints, from children will permit a higher level of integrity in identifying minors overseas where known cases of child smuggling and trafficking reveal higher risk. This includes conducting fingerprint-based checks against lists of missing or abducted children with countries of suspected origin, as well as against Interpol missing persons' records. Fingerprints provide a unique capability to accurately identify individuals that is not possible using a facial image, particularly if the person is a minor. Unlike a facial image, which is subject to considerable change as a person ages into adulthood, fingerprints are relatively stable throughout a person's lifetime.

As was commented on in the contribution by the minister, an interesting element in this particular bill is the cooperation that will be exercised between us and the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. In the contribution, the minister said:

Further, Australia, like the United States, the United Kingdom and many other countries face the return of potentially radicalised minors after participating in conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. While it is an uncomfortable proposition that a minor may be capable of involvement in terrorist activities or extreme violence, the conflict in the Middle East has provided evidence of the involvement of children. Through the Five Country Conference data sharing arrangements, Australia would be able to access fingerprint-based records of minors who may already be known to the security agencies of other countries. Where a minor is suspected of involvement in a terrorist activity or serious criminal activity, fingerprints would enable searches of Five Country Conference partner databases and Australian law enforcement data holdings.

This is a particularly powerful initiative. It means that there is no safe haven for minors or those people who might seek to use minors as a way of propagating their violence and extremist ideas.

In conclusion, it is important to reflect and to reiterate the point that the government is committed to fulfilling its most important responsibility—that is, to protect Australians and Australia, its people and its national interests. The bill is an important part of preventing persons of risk from entering Australia and remaining in Australia undetected. The amendments will expand the Department of Immigration and Border Protection's capabilities to identify individuals through biometric checks, which are more accurate than current document-based checks. The bill creates a new legislative framework for collecting biometrics that will contribute to improved decision making, whether that decision is to grant a noncitizen a visa to come to Australia, to permit entry or departure at the border or to allow a noncitizen to remain in Australia.

At the very conclusion of my comments, I want to reflect on and add to what Senator Johnston had to say in his contribution where he emphasised the fact that what we are dealing with here is not perceived or imagined risk but are very real and current risks. Recent examples of Australians leaving to participate in foreign conflicts have highlighted the need for additional actions to detect such persons at the border. The example of convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, who, in December 2013 used his brother's passport to leave Australia to participate in terrorist related activities, illustrates the need for fingerprint based checks. The collection measures in this bill provide the tools to stop people like Khaled Sharrouf at the border due to the high level of accuracy in identifying individuals provided by fingerprint verification. As unpleasant as it seems, that is a very real and necessary initiative. It has come at exactly the right time and I urge all members of the Senate to support these necessary reforms.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015 on behalf of this government. The important amendments to be made by this bill support changes introduced last year by the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Act 2014. Among other things, the foreign fighters act addressed the emerging threat of Australians seeking to travel overseas to fight with terrorist organisations. Importantly in the context of this particular bill, it enhances the capability of the new Australian Border Force to identify persons seeking to enter and depart Australia and non-citizens who remain in Australia.

Why is this important? We are facing an increasingly challenging time on our borders. By 2020 we shall have 50 million border crossings a year in Australia and it is absolutely essential that we are able to verify who everybody is—like the old adage, trust but verify. With 50 million movements across the borders every year, it will be essential that we have the technology and the processes to enable us to do this.

National security must always be the primary priority of any national government and it is certainly the priority of the current government, as are, as Senator Smith has just said, the preservation of our democratic freedoms, our human rights and our civil liberties. In one sense, they may seem to be incompatible policy objectives. To balance them is never easy and it is right that they should always be contested in this place to ensure we get the balance right. However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Islamic State, people smugglers and other international criminals are a very clear threat to Australia today. In 1986, Margaret Thatcher noted to the British parliament:

Terrorism thrives on a free society. The terrorist uses the feelings in a free society to sap the will of civilization to resist. If the terrorist succeeds, he has won and the whole of free society has lost.

She also noted that:

Terrorism has to be defeated; it cannot be side-stepped. When other ways and other methods have failed—I am the first to wish that they had succeeded—it is right that the terrorist should know that firm steps will be taken to deter him from attacking either other peoples or his own people who have taken refuge in countries that are free.

I know through my own experiences in government, dealing with the threats of al Qaeda and Jamia Islamia taught me that terrorists do not respect compassion, that they will always exploit it and look for a way to get around the system to achieve their aims.

As we all know now in this place, the threat is real and the threat remains. Between 1990 and 2010, 30 Australians were known to have trained or fought with extremist groups in conflict zones, including in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Of these, 25 returned to Australia and 19 became involved in activities in Australia which were euphemistically prejudicial to our national security. At least eight were convicted of terrorist offences. Since that time, with the evolution of Daesh and IS, they have made much greater use of social media and much greater use of technology and also clearly identity fraud. Therefore, the amendments in this legislation are absolutely critical. In fact, it is critical to support the Prime Minister's National Security Statement of 23 February this year, which stated that further legislation was required to combat terrorism and to keep Australians safe. Again as we have seen even as late as this week, recent terrorism related events in Australia and globally serve to remind us yet again that this threat is real. This bill further strengthens Australia's border protection measures by enhancing the capability of the department to identify persons seeking either to enter or to depart Australia and also non-citizens who remain in Australia.

So why as these changes needed and why are they needed now? Recent border and terrorism related events in Australia and worldwide illustrate the need for measures to strengthen community protection outcomes. The measures in this bill will strengthen the department's capability to collect biometrics, to check identity and to do other checks on individuals of concern. We have already heard tonight from other speakers of the recent examples of many Australians who have left Australia to participate in foreign conflicts and the need for additional protections at our borders has been highlighted.

What is the department's history with biometrics? Biometrics are not new. In the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, the biometrics program was been progressively expanded over time, commencing in 2006 with the collection of facial images and fingerprints of illegal foreign fishermen; through to 2010, when the department commenced collecting facial images and fingerprints from offshore visa applicants in certain high-risk locations and onshore protection claimants; and through to 2012, when collecting facial images and fingerprints from non-citizens refused entry at Australia's international airports commenced.

While the current legislative framework has effectively supported Australia's border protection efforts since it was introduced more than 10 years ago, it now needs to be updated to provide officers with the tools to more effectively meet current demands and to keep pace with advances in biometric technology. I believe that the success to date of the department's biometric program and the amount of time and expertise they have now developed in this area demonstrates the value of personal identifiers in protecting Australia's borders and strengthening the integrity of Australia's migration program.

Personal identifiers are essential to detect identity fraud and to conduct appropriate security, law enforcement and immigration checks prior to visa grants at what the department calls 'touch points' during travel to Australia, post arrival in the Australian community and for any subsequent visas to remain in Australia.

Personal identifiers are far more accurate than document based checks for biographic details such as name, date of birth and nationality. Obviously, people have false documentation and they can claim to be or assume the identity of somebody who they are not. The current checks of personal identifiers against existing immigration data holdings and the data holdings of Australian law enforcement agencies and Five Country Conference partner countries have revealed undisclosed adverse immigration and criminal history information for noncitizens and serious discrepancies in the biographic information that they provided.

In fact, the department has made more than 9,000 fingerprint matches with Australian law enforcement agencies and immigration departments of other countries. These matches have revealed undisclosed security and criminal histories, as well as discrepancies between biographical data provided to the department and that provided by other agencies. Again, what this demonstrates is that with the projected 50 million movements across Australian borders by 2020 it is absolutely essential that we trust and verify as much as possible the information provided. I will highlight that again: the department has made more than 9,000 matches with Australian law enforcement and other agencies of people who have provided false information to gain access to this country.

It is clear that biometrics are more accurate than document based checks of biographical details such as name, date of birth and nationality because they are relatively stable over time and are significantly more difficult to forge—even today with the advances in technology. As the utility of collecting biometrics results in a foundation of accurate identification, fingerprints provide higher-integrity identity assurance than identity documentation or facial images.

Current biometric measures which have exposed fraudulent and illegal activity have demonstrated that criminals, possible terrorists, people smugglers and others have used very sophisticated technology to enter Australia illegally. The sheer volume—and the 9,000 who have been detected already—is clearly a strain on Australia's border protection agencies. And that is only increasing every day. Therefore, it is even more important that we make the absolute best use of the technology available to streamline the process and to make it more accurate.

It is this government's duty to ensure that our laws are equal to the task which is faced by our border agencies. While the current biometric program has effectively supported Australia's border protection efforts since it was introduced more than 10 years ago, it now needs to be updated to more effectively meet current threats and to keep pace with advances in biometric technology. Therefore, this bill provides for a simplified scheme to collect biometrics, particularly fingerprints. But it is very important to note that it does not introduce a universal biometrics collection policy. I will just say that again, because it is very important: it does not introduce a universal biometrics collection policy. The department will continue to facilitate the smooth travel to Australia of the overwhelming majority of people who are legitimate travellers and who are law-abiding people, without collecting additional biometrics from them. Whilst the government does acknowledge the impact on some travellers in circumstances where a certain amount of identity verification is required, the increased collection powers are proportionate to the legitimate purpose of protecting the Australian community and the integrity of the migration program.

This bill addresses gaps in the existing biometric legislative framework and replaces seven existing provisions in the Migration Act, which separately authorise the collection of biometrics. Streamlining the existing multiple provisions will remove inconsistency and duplication, and enhance the department's efforts to achieve important government policy objectives. These include removing current restrictions on the circumstances where biometrics can be collected and providing flexibility in the collection of biometrics from citizens and noncitizens who are arriving and departing from Australia each and every day.

The bill also provides a wider power to collect biometrics from noncitizens who have been identified as of concern after their arrival in Australia and also from their behaviours while living in the Australian community that raise alarms with our law enforcement and border protection authorities.

Significant numbers—as I have said, they have already detected about 9,000 of these individuals through this process—of noncitizens have not had identity, security and criminal history checks conducted under the department's biometric program, either because of the timing of their entry into Australia or because of their method of arrival. I think that is one of the most alarming current situations—that probably thousands of noncitizens have not had any identity, security and criminal history checks conducted under this biometrics program, again, because of the timing of their entry into Australia or because of their method of arrival. That should be of concern to all in this chamber.

In terms of the balance: it is important to remember that only a small number of noncitizens are required to provide their biometrics for checking every year. In 2013-14 less than two per cent of noncitizens granted a visa—less than two per cent—to come to Australia provided biometrics to the department. It is not very many people who are required to do this; it is actually less than two per cent. But the higher-integrity identity security law enforcement and immigration history checks are now possible using biometrics. These not only use more of a risk based approach they also streamline and make it much easier for the department to focus on those of the highest concern with a much higher degree of accuracy.

Noncitizens who may be required to provide biometrics include those under investigation by immigration officers for identity fraud or for breaches of visa conditions. I would say to anybody in this chamber that those are community standards which I think most Australians would agree with—people who are under investigation for identity fraud, people lying to come into Australia, or people who are suspected of failing to disclose adverse information when they applied for their visa. As I said, the department has already found over 9,000 such people.

Biometrics collected will be used to conduct additional checks with domestic and international agencies to link individuals under review to security, law enforcement and immigration information that may be known to other agencies but which the individual seeking to come to Australia has not disclosed to the department. The ability to verify information against data held by Five Country Conference partners as well as domestic agencies provides greater integrity to the immigration system and protection against the spread of terrorism and human trafficking; and will assist in resolving the current asylum seeker caseload.

So what does this bill actually do? What is the detail of this bill? As we know, the new Border Force plays a key role in protecting the security of our borders. Measures in the bill focus on biometrics, termed 'personal identifiers' in the Migration Act, which are a unique identifier—unique to one single person. The measures in the bill address gaps and remove restrictions. This will assist to identify persons who cross the border—and to conduct security law enforcement and immigration checks.

The measures in the bill enable the old Department of Immigration and Border Protection—now the Australian Border Force—to counter the current initiatives and technology used by illegal arrivals to gain access to Australia as identity and security checks using these personal identifiers are much more accurate than the document based checks of biographical details.

Specific measures in the bill will, firstly, introduce a broad power to collect biometrics for the purpose of the migration acts and regulations, including assisting in identifying persons who may be a security threat to Australia. As we know, that security threat is very real and still very present. Secondly, the bill will provide the flexibility to always require biometrics in some circumstances—for example, in visa applications from persons who are part of an identified higher risk cohort, or not to require biometrics in other cases. Therefore, it will allow our border agencies to really focus their efforts on those 50,000 movements across our borders by 2020 to really pick out the two per cent of those who need the most scrutiny.

The bill will not mean that biometrics will be collected from the majority of noncitizens who apply for a visa to travel to Australia. It does not introduce a universal biometric collection policy, but provides flexibility to require biometrics from particular individuals or higher risk cohorts.

The bill provides for a framework to enable manual fingerprint-based checks to be carried out using mobile, hand-held devices to detect persons of concern. The checks will be conducted at airports and seaports and will take 20 to 40 seconds to complete. A traveller's identity will be checked against immigration and security agency data holdings using up to four finger images. The images will not be retained following completion of the check.

This enhanced capability to conduct meaningful cross-checks with relevant agencies' data holdings will respond to potential alerts or threats before someone boards an aircraft or ship, or is cleared to move into the Australian community. This is another important and very significant change to our border protection measures here in Australia. These mobile devices will also be deployed for use in other circumstances to assure the identity of noncitizens during key transactions with the departments.

The bill will remove existing restrictions in the Migration Act on collecting biometrics from minors and incapable persons to address current inconsistencies in the Migration Act. And, as we have heard from several other speakers tonight, the restriction for minors is absolutely critical; because, while we like to think that young people are not capable of terrible violence, we have absolutely seen not only Australian minors travelling overseas but also minors from many other countries who have been turned into deadly killing machines and suicide bombers. Sadly that is the unfortunate reality for us here today.

Ultimately, I think it can be argued that this is a child protection measure aimed at preventing child smuggling and/or child trafficking as well as the antiterrorism measures. Collecting personal identifiers and fingerprints from children will permit a higher level of integrity to identify minors travelling overseas—including people smuggling and people trafficking.

In conclusion, the Australian government is committed to fulfilling its most important responsibility—to protect Australia, its people and its interests. It is for those reasons that I commend this bill to the Senate. (Time expired)

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution to the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. I would like to open with an anecdotal story that brings the impacts home to us in the parliament. You are aware that in the confines of Parliament House all of the staff who deal with senators and members on a day-to-day basis have a professional obligation to be able to identify each of us. Each of us has occasion to move around and move freely through the building. It is a security measure and a courtesy measure. Recently, there was an episode here that involved one of our fellow senators, Senator Joe Bullock. I personally think that Joe Bullock is a very handsome man. He has a fine stack of grey hair. He has got very gentle jowls and presents himself in a very distinguished manner. Yet when he recently appeared before estimates—here he is, a reflection, might I say, of myself!—one of the professional staff put my nameplate in front of Senator Bullock. So if that can occur here within Parliament House, where every effort is made to meet the very high standards of security, imagine the difficulties we have with those professional staff who manage our borders, who are involved in law enforcement matters and who deal with, as has been stated before, almost 50 million border crossings each year.

All of us have probably travelled internationally. Many of us find ourselves at airports at all odd hours of the day, where we join with hundreds and hundreds of others. And if you have had a flight that has clashed with another international flight you could have been there with 500 or 600 people, all trying to be processed at a border point. And when you have regard to the number of border points in Australia, where there could be 500 or 600 people being processed at any one time, it starts to build a picture of the challenge involved for those who are charged with the responsibility of the security of our borders of processing those people coming into our country.

Might I say that the roles of the people who provide security are many and varied. Some of the roles they play are a 'there and now' role where they are checking, for example, for drugs or for other forms of contraband. Indeed, we find circumstances where we have very thorough measures in place to see that people do not bring an apple into our country from overseas for fear that there is a worm in the heart of the fruit. So I think measures such as these are necessary so that we can start to isolate high-risk individuals who might want to cross our borders with a worm in their hearts.

To do that we have to bring about measures for our law enforcement and border security agencies, to enable them to do the job with some efficiency. In a former life and in fact in a number of former professions I had considerable experience in dealing with many people—in fact, I am tempted to say hundreds of people—who, over time, made efforts to convince me or my colleagues that they were someone other than who they really were. When we talk about the typical non-biometric measures upon which an individual can be identified, can I go back to training as early as the mid-seventies. I have previously told the story in this place of having to ring a bank, to make arrangements on behalf of my aged mother and of the pain and suffering that I had to go through to be able to convince that bank that indeed I had the power to make an adjustment to my late mother's accounts in her interests, at a time when she was in a nursing home. Yet there are people who can cross our borders, who can make their way through the security provided with less effort than that.

We come back to the point where the traditional method of identifying someone was to find something on their person or in their possession or presented by them that would assist in identifying them—for example, a drivers licence, often with their photo attached. Indeed, on many occasions what I might refer to as a legitimate drivers licence, fraudulently obtained, was presented. That is to say it was a drivers licence, issued by the relevant authority, and in every respect the drivers licence was indeed what it presented as being. Indeed, the face on the drivers licence identified the individual in possession of that document. However, upon examination it was found that the drivers licence was obtained illegally in that much of the information that had been provided on the drivers licence, in particular the identity of that particular individual, was false as a result of fraudulent representations or indeed fraudulent efforts on the part of that particular individual.

The use of photographic evidence is in and of itself unreliable on some occasions. Photographs can be very readily manipulated these days. In fact, a newspaper photographer took a dastardly shot of me recently and, with consent, some work was done on it. And when I appeared in the Sunday paper I even looked finer than Joe Bullock, which takes some real effort on the part of the people who have these skills! I have a daughter who is a desktop publisher and is involved in this work. I have seen some of the work that she has done in manipulating photographs for magazines and annual reports. It is quite remarkable to the point where, when they press the print button and produce a photograph, it in itself becomes an original document. It is not as though you can look at that photograph or piece of paper where that image is being printed and through an examination determine that the image has been manipulated, unless of course it has been a job that has been done poorly.

The other is documents. People will produce documents in their possession that look as if they are legitimate and, indeed, they may well be in the sense that their genesis may well have been prepared by some individual who has the honest but mistaken belief that the person in front of them, who is providing that information, is who they say they are. The information embedded therein can have a powerful impact upon people and security positions.

You have all heard of the examples but we have one in my home state of Queensland where a member of parliament provided an individual with a reference. It was a glowing reference and that glowing reference was used by that individual to achieve certain outcomes. But when that reference was eventually put to the test, of course it failed to live up to some of the statements that had been made in the reference document itself. Now the member of parliament would have us believe that in this case that he was satisfied with the information provided to him, partially by the recipient of the reference and partially by some—I would say poor—research conducted by his staff. So here is another example where if someone was presented with a driver's licence that had a name and details on it with a photograph—and clearly this was the individual—and then they were presented with a reference from a current member of parliament, depending on the circumstances, many tens of thousands of people in security positions around this country would, in effect I think, be satisfied with those sorts of credentials.

Additionally, if an individual were to produce a bank card or two, a letter from their grandmother addressed to them and a short note from a neighbour, all of these things would build the credentials of the individual making the presentation and that would, in turn, persuade some people in security positions to accept those things as having sufficient weight in an aggregate form to allow people to pass through a security point. There have been hundreds of thousands of cases reported over time where people have used either false documents, forged documents or documents that obtain false information to be able to produce an outcome of interest to them. And this is why biometrics become such a valuable tool when you are trying to determine the identity of an individual with absolute certainty.

There are hundreds of thousands of serological samples, bodily fluids, hair, all sorts of bits and pieces that are kept in this country every year as a result of investigations that have been conducted. So normal everyday Australian citizens who find themselves in difficult circumstances either by their own making or under suspicion find that samples are taken and are recorded. In fact, we have entire agencies in this country that have quite literally millions of finger prints online.

So Australian citizens, every one of us no matter what we are doing, while going about our normal everyday business, can find ourselves in circumstances where any number of law enforcement agencies or their officers have the power to take biometrics from us and to test them against the biometrics that are already on record in this country. For example, you and I might find ourselves walking along a street in Sydney where an event has occurred and some officer has a reasonable but mistaken belief that we may be persons of interest. As the law provides in this country, we could be totally innocent—it could be you and I, Joe, mistaken as twins coming away from a birthday party—but they can take our fingerprints and other samples and run them through the system to see that we are not the pair that recently left the scene of a burglary.

These measures have been around for a long time. They are not very effective because, Joe, you and I are still free. But the fact of the matter is they are used on ordinary Australians. We go about our daily business having no real adverse regard to this. This is what keeps our nation safe. Yet there would be some who might resist the idea that if we have particular select group of individuals, a cohort of individuals coming from a high-risk source into our country, we will make sure that they do not have typhoid. We will put them through a scanner that takes their temperature—I came through one the other day—we will make sure that we take every measure to take the apple because it might infect our apple industry, and we will run a sniffer dog along. There may be measures that are available to us that will allow us to lift the standard of our security on those individuals yet we have some people who are yet to be convinced to support these measures.

I have always said that I do not fear ever having my fingerprints taken on any occasion. I used to say this to young crooks that I was involved with—mind you as a police officer, not socially—and they would resist having their fingerprints taken. Prima facie, that would suggest to me that they were trying to conceal something. And the same should be said of those people coming across our borders. If they are concerned about having their biometrics taken that will lift the standard of identifying them to be who they are then you have to ask the question: why? In the modern age, these people, I promise you, spend more time thinking about how to avoid, how to get around, how to get over, how to get under our security measures than any one of us does on a normal day about how we might put them in place.

Biometrics are going to give our professional staff on our borders, those who are charged with the responsibility to keep this nation safe, some additional tools. And they are tools that anybody coming to our country who seeks either refuge in our country, who wants to visit our country or indeed who wants to come here and make their life, they should not fear—in fact they should support the primary ideal—that we as a nation are entitled to know who they are before they enter our nation. Some of these biometric measures that are proposed in this bill are simply going to enhance our chances to do that in an effective and efficient way.

Might I say that, if you are not convinced in relation to the potential of someone who has gone overseas and engaged in activities that are against the interests of this nation, you should consider the issue of the trafficking of children. A child changes over time, so identifying the child at an interval of greater than two years from an old photograph becomes very difficult. For those of you who are not convinced, in the next sittings I will bring you some photographs of me when I was a dashing young man of 17 or 18 years, and you will understand that there is nothing today that reflects the images that are captured in those photos of some 30 years ago. So biometrics are the only sure way that we can record the identity of these people. They allow us, our security staff and those charged with this responsibility every possible chance that they can get to do their job and do their job efficiently.

We have done this at a domestic level. Our police officers now have facilities, many of them in patrol cars, that will allow them to take the biometrics of an individual and get an immediate answer back that helps them identify who the individual is. We collect massive amounts of data. I would not know, and nor would you, how many times we have been driving along and an unmarked police vehicle that we would not identify will have punched into systems within the vehicle information that will allow them to identify possibly who we are but, more importantly, who the owner of the vehicle is, whether the vehicle is currently registered, the address of the owner and other details. Through some other information, they may form the view that the vehicle was being driven by us. Indeed, there are so many ways that they can immediately access data in relation to us to identify who we are. This is the modern world. They can search and go onto our Facebook page, and, if they are satisfied that that is us in the Facebook page, in a matter of 10 or 15 minutes, I am told by my previous police colleagues, they can build an entire picture on someone while they are driving along following a particular vehicle. They can form a view as to who they are, their age and their identity. In fact, once they start to penetrate some of the other data that is available, some of it on the public record, they can build an entire picture of your family, the circumstances of your life and where you may be going. If you are travelling in a particular direction, from the data they have they can work out exactly where you might be going. (Time expired)

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank senators for their contributions to the second reading debate on the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. Before I turn to the summing up of this bill, I refer to the second reading amendment that has been moved by the Australian Greens, that the debate be adjourned until a privacy impact statement has been tabled in the parliament. I am pleased to advise that the assessment has now been completed in consultation with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, and I am now tabling a copy of the assessment for the parliament's information.

In relation to the assessment itself, the privacy impact statement makes two recommendations in relation to Australian Privacy Principles 3 and 5. In relation to Australian Privacy Principle 3, it is recommended that the department ensure that its officers are fully trained in using the new provisions under the bill. In relation to Australian Privacy Principle 5, it is recommended that the department update its relevant public notices in relation to identifying information and privacy, and that signs are installed at airports—

Debate interrupted.