Electronic Transactions (Legal Proceedings) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 28 February 2017.)

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (12:35): I indicate that, while the Dignity Party does support this bill, we do have a few questions and concerns about it. We understand that this bill only allows for people to opt to receive a summons and legal proceedings via email rather than hard copy letter should they choose, but we have a few concerns about the implications of that and would like to ask the government some questions to which we hope they can respond before the passage of this bill.

First, we would like to know who in the community was consulted about this change, particularly from the disability community and, even more particularly within that, people with communication-specific disabilities. My staff member who attended the briefing on my behalf did ask a question as to who was consulted; I understand the response she received was that the disability community had been consulted, but the staff at that briefing were not able to indicate exactly who that comprised, so we would be interested to know the names of groups or individuals who had been consulted as appropriate and what concerns or ideas they may have raised.

Of course, as I have said, we know it is not compulsory to receive your documents by electronic means, but we wonder whether the government has considered some potential implications, particularly for people with disabilities, including vision impairment or people who are deaf or hard of hearing, even people with an intellectual disability or acquired brain injury, as well as people who might be of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and have English as their second language, and others who may agree to receiving these documents via email without necessarily fully understanding what this means.

Many people have limited internet access and significant challenges in understanding legal proceedings, and our departments, systems and processes are increasingly relying on this, and it is not fair if people do not have easy access to electronic means to receive this information.

I, on behalf of the Dignity Party, will be holding a briefing next week on what is often referred to as the digital divide, that is, the divide between people with and without ready access to computers and the internet. I encourage members to come along as this is a very serious issue for many in our community in 21^st century Australia.

I suppose those are our concerns. Who particularly from the disability community has been consulted? Did they raise any concerns about the potential implications for the use of electronic means, such as whether these emails will be accessible to people using screen readers or whether there will be any in a form of English or simple language that makes them easy to understand, particularly for people from non-English speaking backgrounds?

So, while we support the general thrust of the bill, we have concerns for people who may not have ready access to technology and also for people who may have some literacy and other communication needs to be taken into account, and if the government could respond to those concerns we would be grateful.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.