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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-31 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

NationBuilder

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (15:34): Someone is perpetrating a massive fraud on the people of South Australia. There is corruption at the highest levels somewhere in South Australia's public sector. The question is: who, why and who is benefiting?

It seems to me from the evidence before us that we have seen in the media, both in The Advertiser and the ABC, that someone has implanted within state government servers redirection to NationBuilder and the state Liberal leader. Someone within that organisation is allowing people who go to state government sites as a trusted source of information to have their data mined and handed to a political party, a third party, against the privacy principles stated by the Premier in the DPC statement issued.

The question is: why is this happening and who benefits? We know who the beneficiary is: the beneficiary is the Liberal Party. What we do not know is who is doing it, who is conducting this fraud, this corruption on the people of South Australia. Whoever is doing it is in serious legal jeopardy. They are facing serious charges, charges of abuse of public office, interfering with a machine. These are breaches of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, let alone corruption allegations by any independent body, and we have not even contemplated any federal charges for breaches of privacy.

The question, though, becomes: how do we find out who these people are? The Premier categorically said in this house that state government websites have not redirected anyone to NationBuilder or the state Liberal leader. That is incorrect. Media reports by media outlets say that is untrue. Mimecast put out a statement, and reading that statement in full proves that that statement is incorrect. Mimecast do not do what the Premier says they do. NationBuilder is a waypoint on some links on state government websites, and that NationBuilder site is one that has been commissioned by the state Liberal Party.

Who benefits from this corruption? Well, the Liberal Party. This corruption would involve someone in government allowing that embedding to occur. I do not have access to sa.gov.au other than as a user. I cannot get involved in the URL or put any inputs into that site. That is controlled, as it should be, by the Crown. The question is: who in the Crown is allowing anyone to embed these sites in sa.gov.au in any form, whether it is SA Health, whether it is the Department of Treasury and Finance or whether it is the premier.sa.gov.au?

Who is perpetrating this corruption on the people of South Australia? Who is doing this corrupt behaviour? We need to find out, and the only way we can find out—because the Premier is not going to tell us because he claims that he does not know, another assertion he has made to the parliament—is through a legitimate, independent inquiry, an independent inquiry that has coercive powers and that can call people in and ask them questions.

To be fair, I do not believe that media advisers to ministers are involved in this corruption. I do not think they are. I think simply they have been instructed to perform tasks in a certain way, and the outcome of those certain tasks is having links embedded in government servers that then allow people who access that to deposit cookies, as the member for Kaurna was talking about, monitor browsers, find out who is reading what press releases and give that information to the Liberal Party.

I and most of my colleagues have been inundated with people saying they are receiving unsolicited emails from stevenmarshall.com.au., not premier.sa.gov.au, the Liberal Party's email for the Premier. How is the Premier collating this database of email addresses? If there is any suggestion or if there is any evidence that those email databases have been populated by state government servers into the Liberal Party, that is a corruption that has not been matched in this state's history. Let me just repeat that: a corruption that would not be matched in this state's history.

The legal jeopardy of those public officers involved in this crime is immense. There needs to be an independent inquiry. People need to have faith in our government institutions. If people are stealing data, it should be investigated. Data theft is the same as stealing money, if not worse. I ask the house to consider this as we go forward into the Easter break.

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