Independents Kate Chaney and David Pocock have accused the Albanese government of letting political parties off the hook by excluding them from its privacy crackdown, while the Coalition has warned of the impact on small business.
While Pocock has said he is “cautiously optimistic” about reforms which include greater protections for children, the refusal to narrow the political exemptions to the Privacy Act has rankled just weeks after Labor complained the referendum no campaign had harvested data from postal votes.
Chaney, who has put forward a private member’s bill that would end parties’ exemption to privacy laws, said “we deserve better”.
“Australians are sick of seeing political parties creating one rule for themselves and another rule for everyone else,” the Curtin MP told Guardian Australia.
“If small businesses have to comply with the Privacy Act, political parties should too.
“People are shocked to find out that political parties send voters deceptive postal vote applications to harvest their personal information.
“If this government wants to rebuild trust in our political processes, it must stop data harvesting by political parties.”
Pocock praised provisions that will prohibit entities from targeting and directly marketing to children, and trading in the personal information of children, describing them as “something that we have to take a really strong stand on”.
“As far as politicians go, I don’t agree with politicians being exempt from privacy [laws]. If you speak to most people they’re not happy with some of the data harvesting and text messaging that happens,” he said.
“So yeah, [it’s] certainly something we’ll look at.
“As independents, it’s really frustrating seeing the major parties on issues like this, they seem to have a bit of a unity ticket.”
Pocock also cited the crossbench push for truth in political advertising before the referendum campaign, arguing “more and more Australians are going to be demanding it”.
One of the most controversial changes in the reforms, which Labor aims to legislate in 2024, is to end the small business exemption to privacy law. It said it would do so after consulting consultation, a phase-in period, and compensation.
The shadow attorney general, Michaelia Cash, said it would be “appalling but not surprising if Labor’s new privacy laws target small businesses by imposing more complexity and costs at a time when they are already struggling”.
“We all want better protection for our information, but we’re talking about imposing a complex and difficult regulatory regime on hairdressers and mechanics, and potentially making them pay civil penalties if they make a mistake,” she said.
But Kate Bower, a consumer data advocate at Choice, said that “for ordinary people it makes no difference the size of the business involved in a data breach”, and that all consumers should be protected against the unfair use of their data.
Bower cited the fact that two-thirds of real estate agents who aren’t covered by privacy law despite holding very sensitive and personal information.
“We welcome the government’s commitment to work with small businesses to ensure the exemption is removed fairly and to give them adequate time [to adjust],” she said.
Edward Santow, the director of policy and governance at UTS’s Human Technology Institute, said while it was “disappointing” the government had rejected a broader right for adults to opt out of targeted advertising, there was a “lot to like in this set of commitments”.
“We’re conscious of the history of failed privacy reform – and don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good,” he said.
