Govt Refuses to Support Privacy Alerts Bill

By Allie Coyne, itnews

The Coalition Government has refused to back a reinvigorated bill that would force companies to notify customers of a data breach, saying while it agrees with the concept in principle, the proposed legislation needs more work.

In March this year Labor Senator Lisa Singh re-introduced the lapsed Privacy Alerts Bill, which failed to be heard in the Senate before the upper house closed ahead of the 2013 federal election.

The text of the current Privacy Alerts Bill 2014 is identical to the Privacy Alerts Bill 2013. It seeks to compel entities that suffer a serious data breach - involving personal, credit, or tax file number data - to notify the Privacy Commissioner and individuals affected as soon as possible.

The previous bill received unconditional support from a parliamentary committee investigating the issue, but Coalition senators at the time expressed concerns about a lack of definition around terms like “serious breach” and “serious harm” in the bill, along with the speed in which the legislation was drafted.

Coalition senators today repeated the same concerns in a second reading of the bill in the Senate, arguing that by re-introducing a bill with identical text as the previous "rushed" bill, Labor had failed to address the issues highlighted in the last round of debate.

Data Theft: "The Bill has not been well thought out and has not taken into consideration many of the submissions made by key stakeholders."

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Data Theft Submission - August 2013