Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It is indeed a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Privacy Bill. It is a straightforward bill but as has been said before by previous speakers it's an important one. It fulfils some very important functions. What it does basically is it replaces the Privacy Act which is 25 years old. Things have changed in the interim over those 25 years. We are living in a digital age. The way that businesses and Governments operate has changed. It has actually transformed dramatically over that time period. There are new technologies that we see every day. There are new benefits but there are also some threats and some challenges that need to be dealt with and that's what this bill does. It basically regulates the collection the use and the disclosure of individual information. It modernises our legislation and it does so in a way that brings it into line with international recommendations—for example by the OECD—as well. So it tweaks a few things. It makes some changes. It retains some parts of the current Act—for example the complaints system—but it modifies it. So for example under this particular bill if someone's privacy is breached they can complain to the Privacy Commissioner. The change that this bill will bring about is that the Privacy Commissioner's role I guess is strengthened. It gives the role a bit more teeth because the commissioner who then attempts to resolve the dispute can actually come to a decision—make a decision. If the person is not happy with the decision that's made it can be appealed to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. The crux of this bill is that it promotes people's confidence in their personal information being used in a way that is secure and it ensures that it's treated properly. It will allow for privacy breaches to be addressed earlier for them to be addressed quicker and it gives as I mentioned previously the Privacy Commissioner a stronger role. I did want to go into a little bit about the specific changes that this bill suggests but I thought I'd also jump to what constitutes a privacy breach. We've heard a little bit about the types of privacy breaches so individuals' information being used or basically unauthorised or accidental access to or disclosure or destruction of someone's personal information. Quite recently on the Justice Committee we discussed the expungement bill that came before this House and that was passed by this House just a couple of weeks ago if I'm not mistaken. We had quite an in-depth discussion at the select committee level to make sure that people who might have access to criminal records of homosexual men who have historical convictions could not then use that information in a way that would be detrimental to those people because we know that breaches of privacy can cause a lot of harm to people and can actually affect their quality of life significantly. So it's those sorts of breaches that this bill once it is passed will address as well. It also includes ransomware attacks. There is quite a lot of evidence. I was having a look at the detrimental effects or how much we've suffered from ransomware attacks across the world and it's significant. It's actually cybercrime. So it's about people who have been basically extorting money from companies. It's become quite a significant issue of electronic security around the world. It's become a lucrative business where people then use personal information to commit identity fraud—highly sensitive research that is compromised. A recent survey in—I think it was—Australia found that about 20 percent of attacks were motivated by espionage. Then there are those who just do it for fun rather than financial gain. So all sorts of security breaches have come with a complete change in circumstances over the last 25 years and this bill will go a long way to modernise legislation to address those privacy breaches whether it compromises the information of individuals or companies. As I said earlier as well it actually brings our legislation into line with international legislation. So I commend this bill to the House. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.