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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-04-01 Daily Xml
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Motions

Government Privacy Principles, Contingent Notice

Debate resumed.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (11:36): I also welcome Mrs Byrne's attendance here today. Can I speak to two issues. On the issue of the contingency motion and the urgency to hear this matter, the first question really relates to whether in fact the convention of seeking the agreement of the 58 before it has been made. I suspect not. All conventions seem to have completely gone out the window with the opposition, particularly the member for West Torrens.

The two that struck me as being particularly important were the member for Florey's motion in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and the inquiry in relation to that. Of course, they appear to have no care as to whether that should have any priority. Maybe she is quite happy to put it off—that it is not a matter that is important to her any further—but it certainly canvasses a very important issue.

The second motion is one from Ms Hildyard, which seeks to have a select committee in relation to consent to sexual activity. Perhaps that is not important. Perhaps she has not been asked. Perhaps she is just happy to just say that is less important in priority. In considering that assessment of whether the other 57 have even been asked at all, I do not know. But it is disappointing that the member for West Torrens has not even had the courtesy to advise the house as to whether there is an indication of support.

The threshold next question is: has there been a circumstance which justifies the urgent hearing of this matter to take precedence over all other business, and that relates to two things. The arguments are, firstly, that it is a matter of urgency that is to be investigated by this house and, secondly, that some precedent is set by virtue of the government's initiative of a select committee into the scandalous conduct at the 2014 election.

Can I just indicate firstly on the latter. The revelations seven years after the circumstances surrounding the distribution of the pamphlet, 'Can you trust Habib?', formalised in a select committee yesterday—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I am identifying, Mr Speaker—

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: He does not want to know about it.

The SPEAKER: The Deputy Premier will resume her seat. The member for Lee on a point of order.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I rise on the very same matter you raised with me during the course of my contribution, and that is of direct relevance to the urgency of the motion. Perhaps you could consider, after some level of hesitation, providing the same counsel to the member for Bragg that you provided me.

The SPEAKER: I will rule on the point of order. There is a distinct difference. The matter upon which I addressed my remarks to the member for Lee in the course of his contribution related to aspects of entering into debate on the substance of Notice of Motion No. 60. The matter that the Deputy Premier is for the moment traversing, as I hear it for the time being, is in response to the characterisation of the context and relevant priority of the contingency motion. I will be listening carefully, but for the time being there is no point of order and I do not uphold the point of order on those grounds. The Deputy Premier has the call.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: To be clear, my understanding of one of the legs of the argument of the member for Lee is that some precedent had been set by the government in relation to the select committee motion debated yesterday that justifies this being applied for urgent consideration of this motion today. I completely reject that. I simply place on the record that in terms of the government's motion in relation to a historical action in a campaign, I do not have to go into the facts of it. We debated that matter yesterday and I will not reflect on the vote.

What I will say is entirely distinguishable from what we are dealing with today. That related to a matter that occurred seven years ago, which no longer has access to other forms of inquiry, electoral acts, the Court of Disputed Returns, aspects of whether it goes to Equal Opportunity. They are gone. They are well and truly gone. What we have is an allegation that has been made and we need to clear that up for the election. On the other hand, the situation here is that an allegation has been made by the ALP in relation to—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: And substantiated.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Members keep interjecting to say 'and substantiated'.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Playford is called to order and the member for Mawson is called to order. The interjections on my left will cease. The Deputy Premier has the call.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: The allegation that is the basis of the head of the argument for having to urgently deal with this is that the government in some way, in some conspiratorial or corrupt manner with public servants, has (a) been harvesting information and (b) misusing it and, further, that there is proof of this by emails going from a member of the government to a person, notwithstanding even calls by the media for the ALP to produce this information, if they have such documentation, that it be provided—if not provided to the government, because they clearly do not trust the government, that it be provided to such an integrity body as the Ombudsman. But they do not want even to do that.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: No, we want an independent inquiry of the parliament.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Suggesting that the Ombudsman is not independent is another matter, but it seems to me that the textbook Tom approach—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: —to these things is to cast an allegation, provide no evidence, ask questions in the parliament—no problem with that—present them to any body that he wishes to. Of course, the Minister for Energy has listed a number of people, depending on what the allegation might be, for people to inquire into this. If indeed there is work to be done by any integrity body or the police, if there are allegations of corruption, which is what is being asserted, then let them attend to that.

Obviously, any inquiry by the parliament and a select committee is going to have to take into account matters that have been dealt with in these other forums. But so far the ALP have thrown out the allegations, refused to produce the evidence, have not apparently even referred it to bodies such as the Ombudsman; if they want to, they can do that.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: How do you know?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I heard your transcript yesterday on radio, member for West Torrens.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Here we go: 'English'.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Is that a problem?

The SPEAKER: Order! The Deputy Premier will not respond to interjections.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for West Torrens is called to order.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: What I will just bring to the attention of the house is that the government has at all times said—and the Premier has made this very clear in the house—that if there has been any assertion in relation to these matters, of which the public sector has control as public servants have acted, or there has been any improper process in relation to this matter, or there has been any harvesting, to the government's knowledge there has been no harvesting, there has been no collection of data and there has been no retention of data. Therefore there has been nothing to misuse. That is our position.

If there is evidence that a public servant has done that in any way, or an agency has had access to this, or there has been any breach in relation to privacy principles, there are other forums that need to deal with it: firstly, the Privacy Committee. Members might be aware that the chair of the Privacy Committee, Simon Froude, who—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: —is the Presiding Member of the Privacy Committee—

Mr Picton interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Kaurna is called to order.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: —is the director of the state archives and State Records. That committee provides an annual report each year not to me but to the parliament. I suggest members have a look at it and read it, and see what the work of that is—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is called to order.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: The Privacy Committee obviously have to have a minister responsible for them, and everyone knows that the Attorney-General is in that position. My job is to make sure that they carry out their function, and have the resources to do that, and to provide their annual report to parliament. I urge members to have a look at it.

Mr Froude has given a public statement that he has forwarded correspondence to the Department of the Premier and Cabinet to seek information in relation to this assertion that has been made. The Premier has stood in this house and made it clear that he will, of course, do anything to support that occurring. I understand the Ombudsman has also made a statement that he is expecting to receive, from the Privacy Committee, copies of any of that material.

If the opposition have any material that needs to be presented for consideration by the committee, I encourage them to provide it to either of those bodies or to such other body as they want to present it. All these options are open to them. There is a current inquiry underway in relation to this matter to make some assessment about whether there is any deficiency in relation to the privacy principles, which is the subject of the matter the opposition is seeking to hasten to be heard this morning. There are those inquiries being undertaken, and I urge them to cooperate and provide that data.

They simply keep saying that there is a need to have an inquiry because there is, they say, evidence to support that there has been some harvesting of data, some collection of data, and furthermore, now that there is a cookie component to it, that in some way this is some other heightened capacity that, they claim, supports their evidence to do this.

The government, the Premier, have no question about any of these inquiries taking place. Let's get on with the inquiry that is to take place. I remind members that if they have a look at the annual report they will see that there is also a cyber specialist on this committee, and that is the forum that should be given the opportunity to complete that task.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Deputy Premier's time has expired. Before I call the member for West Torrens—who, if he speaks, will close debate—I remind members of the importance of giving the member who is on their feet and has the call the opportunity be heard in silence. The debate is just that, and the opportunity afforded to members who are responsive to debate is that they are not to engage in interjection in the course of a member's contribution. All of that is well known. It is important for the purposes of the productive disposition of business in the chamber, so I just remind members.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (11:49): It is obvious the government will not be supporting this contingent motion. The cover-up has begun. In my experience, it is the cover-up that gets you, never the act. If there has been an inadvertent harvesting of data, that is a crime and people will face the full extent of the law if we can get to the bottom of it. The government is working to scrub clean websites. Documents are probably being shredded. You can hear the shredders in the morning.

An old saying from the 1920s in Louisiana, when the Longs ran that state like a corrupt organised crime family, is that the key to a good committee is to make sure that the president of that committee is so amenable that if the window is open and a leaf blows in the chair of the committee will sign it. That is the sign of a good committee.

The Attorney-General told this parliament that a committee that answers to her—she used the words 'answers to her'—is investigating this. The government want us to believe that they can exonerate themselves. That is not how justice works; it is not how it works in the Westminster system of government.

The government told this house, the House of Assembly, that no redirection occurs. That is false and it has been proven to be false and that is not true. The government did not make an accurate statement on that matter. People are being redirected to NationBuilder and stateliberalleader. That is occurring and the government are working to rid their servers of that.

The question is: who put it there, who benefits and who organised it? I note that Mr James Stevens was here in the parliament yesterday. Why be in a room when you can make a phone call, speak in person? Parliament House is a pretty good place to come. I have to say there is a lot of smoke around the stench of this scandal—a lot of stench.

We know that Mr Stevens was sent to the United States to recruit NationBuilder. We know that the leader of the then opposition's budget was used for it and we know that the leader of the then opposition's Chief of Staff was a signatory to MPs' levy accounts. We know that that money was used to build a data campaign capability within the leader of the then opposition's office that has carried into government. We know that. Do you know how I know that? Members opposite are pulling hamstrings to cross the street to tell me all about it.

Something is rotten in the government. We have to get to the bottom of it. As the Leader of Government Business said, ICAC might be investigating this; he seems to know more than me. And, yes, we will fully cooperate with any ICAC investigation, any Ombudsman's investigation and any police investigation. The idea that the Deputy Premier can investigate herself and then declare herself innocent is laughable. The idea that the Premier can exonerate himself is laughable.

Either this parliament takes what people say to it seriously or it does not. If a premier can tell this parliament that no redirection occurs and that statement is patently false and gets away with it, then nothing that is said in this parliament matters ever again. Again, the institution and the conventions of this place matter. I commend the contingent motion to the house for its consideration.

The house divided on the motion:

Ayes 21

Noes 23

Majority 2

AYES
Bedford, F.E. Bell, T.S. Bettison, Z.L.
Bignell, L.W.K. Boyer, B.I. Brock, G.G.
Brown, M.E. Close, S.E. Cook, N.F.
Gee, J.P. Hildyard, K.A. Hughes, E.J.
Koutsantonis, A. (teller) Malinauskas, P. Michaels, A.
Mullighan, S.C. Odenwalder, L.K. Picton, C.J.
Stinson, J.M. Szakacs, J.K. Wortley, D.
NOES
Basham, D.K.B. Chapman, V.A. Cowdrey, M.J.
Cregan, D. Duluk, S. Ellis, F.J.
Gardner, J.A.W. Harvey, R.M. (teller) Knoll, S.K.
Luethen, P. Marshall, S.S. McBride, N.
Murray, S. Patterson, S.J.R. Pisoni, D.G.
Power, C. Sanderson, R. Speirs, D.J.
Tarzia, V.A. Treloar, P.A. van Holst Pellekaan, D.C.
Whetstone, T.J. Wingard, C.L.
PAIRS
Piccolo, A. Pederick, A.S.

Motion thus negatived.

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