Division
Penny Wong I rise to speak on the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill 2016on behalf of the opposition. The opposition will be supporting this legislation. We welcome this bill which has been much delayed in its introduction by this government. We support the bill because it is actually a Labor bill. It is nearly identical to a bill that passed the House with bipartisan support some four years ago, but which lapsed at the election in 2013. It has taken this government that long to re-introduce this bill. Really, it ought to have been one of the first things on the Attorney-General's agenda, but, as we know, he has been distracted with a few other things. Let me outline why this bill is important and why we thought fit to introduce it four years ago. As it stands, an individual's personal data can be breached by a government agency, a bank or an online store and there be no requirement that the individual be notified so that they can change their passwords or take other measures to protect themselves. A person might be told tomorrow that their data was hacked four years ago, and that organisation would face no consequences for its failure to notify them at the time. This is the situation that this government and this Attorney-General has let linger thanks to an inexplicable inertia on this important issue. Let us have a look, briefly, at the history. In 2013, Mr Dreyfus, the then Attorney-General, introduced the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill. That bill, like this one, made it mandatory for regulated entities under the Privacy Act to alert consumers when their personal data had been breached, whether through accident or malice. The 2013 bill followed an extensive report by the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2008 which recommended that the Privacy Act be amended to provide as follows: An agency or organisation is required to notify the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals when specified personal information has been, or is reasonabl
Senate, 2017-02-13. negative: ayes 11, noes 40.
Question
Penny Wong I rise to speak on the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill 2016on behalf of the opposition. The opposition will be supporting this legislation. We welcome this bill which has been much delayed in its introduction by this government. We support the bill because it is actually a Labor bill. It is nearly identical to a bill that passed the House with bipartisan support some four years ago, but which lapsed at the election in 2013. It has taken this government that long to re-introduce this bill. Really, it ought to have been one of the first things on the Attorney-General's agenda, but, as we know, he has been distracted with a few other things. Let me outline why this bill is important and why we thought fit to introduce it four years ago. As it stands, an individual's personal data can be breached by a government agency, a bank or an online store and there be no requirement that the individual be notified so that they can change their passwords or take other measures to protect themselves. A person might be told tomorrow that their data was hacked four years ago, and that organisation would face no consequences for its failure to notify them at the time. This is the situation that this government and this Attorney-General has let linger thanks to an inexplicable inertia on this important issue. Let us have a look, briefly, at the history. In 2013, Mr Dreyfus, the then Attorney-General, introduced the Privacy Amendment (Privacy Alerts) Bill. That bill, like this one, made it mandatory for regulated entities under the Privacy Act to alert consumers when their personal data had been breached, whether through accident or malice. The 2013 bill followed an extensive report by the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2008 which recommended that the Privacy Act be amended to provide as follows: An agency or organisation is required to notify the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals when specified personal information has been, or is reasonabl
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