HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-08-25 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

COVID-19 QR Codes

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:16): My question is to the Premier. How likely is it that we will have a national QR code enforced and how soon might that happen?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:16): It's a good question because there is quite a lot of variation between jurisdictions. You would note that in the very early days what happened was individual states had different approaches and, in fact, some states just required a type of check-in methodology, which could have been manual or it could have been a QR code check-in that was determined by the individual business.

So you would have a situation in some jurisdictions where you would go to one restaurant and you would QR code and you would have to put all of your details in, and then you would go into a Bunnings and you would have to do a separate check-in, and then you would go into a government office and it was different again. This was cumbersome. It also, I think, led to issues around privacy. If individual businesses were collecting that data, how are they using it? This is an important question to ask.

In South Australia, we went the opposite way, so a central QR code register. This goes into the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. The information is encrypted. It is kept for 28 days, after which it is destroyed. I think there have been many millions of check-ins, which have now been destroyed, here in South Australia. On very few occasions so far have we had to go in basically to look at that data. The most notable time, of course, was with regard to the most recent outbreak, where it was extraordinarily helpful. The vast majority of times, that data is never accessed. It can only be accessed by SA Health—by nobody else—and then of course the information is used and destroyed.

With regard to whether or not people interstate adopt our system, I think the answer to that is that it is unlikely. When you get to an airport and you go and visit Canberra, you need to download their app. If you go to Queensland, you need to download their app. I don't think we are contemplating a situation where we are going to have a national QR code check-in because, again, for the reasons that I was saying before, we collect that data in the Department of the Premier and Cabinet here in South Australia. It is fully encrypted. Other states will have a different way of dealing with privacy and the data collected from people in their jurisdictions at the time.

I do personally hope that we can move towards greater levels of national harmonisation. Certainly from South Australia's perspective, we are sharing our learning in terms of the QR code check-in app that we have in South Australia, sharing the link that we have to the Australian Immunisation Register and how we apply that to a QR code check-in.

Of course, at the moment every South Australian should be quite proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app, which is using facial recognition as well as geolocation to essentially supervise remotely people who are selected to do home-based quarantine rather than hotel-based quarantine. On the first day we did three and on the second day we did eight. I am not sure how many people were added to it today.

I can report to this house that all of the check-ins that were required—and it's done on a random basis; we don't tell people how many times they are going to be asked to check in per day because if we say there are going to be four, and they get to the fourth one, they could essentially leave home and come back the next day. It is a random number for each of those people who are doing it. All of it has moved very, very smoothly so far.

That gives us great confidence that this could be a way that people coming back, stranded Australian citizens who are coming back to Australia, can do that quarantine at home. But they've got to show that they can do it in a place that is free from any people coming to visit them or being co-located with them. I think it's working well at the moment, but we will have more to report to the national cabinet once this pilot continues to roll out.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT