South Australian Integrated Land Information Service

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:06): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Treasurer representing the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure minister, the Hon. Stephan Knoll.

Leave granted.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: What's his name?

The PRESIDENT: Don't respond. Resist the urge to respond.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: Which minister?

The PRESIDENT: He has already said it.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: The previous Labor government last year sold off the Lands Titles Office, although you wouldn't know it by their protests. I personally have used the services of the LTO sparingly; however, I accepted that there was a certain amount of information that the public could glean about titles, ownership and sales figures. A constituent has contacted me, alarmed at the amount of personal financial information he was able to access from historical property searches as a guest user on the South Australian Integrated Land Information Service, also known by the convenient acronym SAILIS.

Understandably, information is required for certain property transactions, but I was unaware that you could also see the full amounts of loans, names, their banks, etc. To me, without proper reason, this could result in serious breaches of privacy for the countless thousands of property owners on the register and also place sellers at a disadvantage compared with buyers. When I decided to take a look for myself yesterday by using the SAILIS historical searches guest user account, I found this message from the Registrar-General and the chief executive of Land Services SA, which has stopped free guest access:

Land Services SA has been monitoring the level of attempted access to free historical searches using guest accounts. Given a recent increase in the level of attempted access, and out of an abundance of caution, Land Services SA in consultation with the Office of the Registrar-General have determined to remove guest…access to historical searches for the immediate future. Land Services SA and Office of the Registrar-General are working together to implement a longterm solution that will allow appropriate access to historical searches going forward.

Can the minister please explain the reasons for this bulletin and what is actually meant by 'given a recent increase in the level of attempted access' and 'an abundance of caution', and are there concerns about how this site is being used or abused?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:09): The flippant response, which I'm not used to, is maybe the recent increase is as a result of the honourable member's research in relation to the issue, but I'm happy to take the honourable member's questions on notice. He rightly identified that the former government privatised the Lands Titles Office and, as we discovered, that there were secret deals and hidden provisions within the agreement that I have already placed on the public record.

I am not aware that there were any secret deals done by the former Labor government in relation to this particular issue, so I am not aware that it was tied up with another secret deal that the member for West Torrens and the former government did that might have impacted on this, but I will certainly have people urgently search out an answer to the honourable member's question. If it was an ongoing issue—that is, it pre-existed the former Labor government's privatisation of the Lands Titles Office—I will again take up the member's questions with the minister and his officers to find out why there has been this recent upsurge in activity.

The Hon. I.K. Hunter: Which minister?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: The Minister for Transport. The Hon. Mr Hunter is hard of hearing, I think. I am happy to take the member's questions on notice. As I said, I have no direct knowledge of the background to the particular issues. I will bring back an answer as expeditiously as I can.