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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-31 Daily Xml
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Matters of Interest

NationBuilder

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (15:28): Does the privacy of South Australians matter? Should we be able to trust the government with our personal details? Is breach of trust important? Very serious questions remain unanswered by the Premier of South Australia and a number of his ministers about the use of government websites to collect information for the Liberal Party. We have seen the government, led by the Premier, ducking and weaving to avoid answering questions about what has happened to South Australians' data over the past 12 months.

I want to specifically speak about revelations that we heard aired on ABC radio this morning about the Department of Primary Industries and Regions being directly linked to this scandal. Are regional residents being tricked into unfairly and unknowingly handing over personal information to Steven Marshall and the Liberal Party?

For example, as of last night, the Department of Primary Industries and Regions had a state government link on their website for users who wanted extra information about legal limits for fishing in South Australia. If you clicked on that link you would expect it to take you to the page that provides you with the appropriate information, and that is it.

It appears that people using PIRSA's site may have been, as the Liberal Party themselves have previously described it, sucked in. When users click on certain links on PIRSA's website it momentarily redirects the user through to another link which reads stateliberalleader.nationbuilder.com. In a split second, regional residents are unknowingly handing over some of their most private details.

According to NationBuilder's own privacy policy, they can access from anyone who comes across their site the following information: your email address, your phone number, they can identify your public social media accounts, details about your employment, details about your computer, details about your internet connection and they can track your behaviour through third-party websites.

I am certain that fishing enthusiasts who look up information from PIRSA's websites do not expect that they are handing over all this personal information to the Liberal Party and I am sure they would be shocked and dismayed to learn that they are.

Imagine if someone phoned PIRSA to seek some information about fishing limits or about fruit fly or anything else and they were asked to provide their email address, a phone number, their employment details, some social media information, details about their internet connection and so on, it would not go down at all well and, of course, it would not happen.

So why is it okay for the Liberal Party to do this via the back door through NationBuilder? What other parts of the Regional Development website are redirecting people through stateliberalleader.nationbuilder? What does primary industries minister David Basham know about this scandal and what has he done? What has he done to protect regional residents' privacy and details?

We know that the Marshall Liberal government has done a terrible job in combatting the fruit fly outbreak in South Australia, so much so that over 300 suburbs in Adelaide are under various restrictions until December of this year. We know that many people across these 300 suburbs in Adelaide, along with many residents in the Riverland, have sought up-to-date and ongoing information about the outbreak through the state government's PIRSA website.

One can only assume there have been thousands of South Australians who have sought information from the website. Have they been unknowingly sucked in by Steven Marshall and David Basham with their private details automatically handed over? Why were the Liberal Party links in government websites? Why are South Australians receiving unsolicited emails from Steven Marshall?

These are the questions that South Australians deserve to have answered. That is why we need an independent investigation, not some investigation from within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet but a truly independent investigation so that South Australians can find out how this outrage occurred and ensure that it cannot ever happen again.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. M.C. Parnell): Thank you. I now call the Hon. David Ridgway.

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