Coronavirus Australia: Media ad blitz to coax app adoption

The Morrison government’s soon-to-be launched coronavirus app is set to be turbocharged by a state and federal ad campaign.

The Australian government coronavirus (COVID-19) app seen on a mobile phone. Picture: Dave Hunt/AAP

Scott Morrison’s appeal for the public to help Australia’s paramedics, nurses and doctors by downloading the government’s soon-to-be launched coronavirus app is set to be turbocharged by a state and federal ad campaign.

The Prime Minister also said the federal government would have “no access whatsoever” to encrypted data stored by the app, amid revelations health authorities would receive a person’s age range, postcode, phone number and name if they were using the tool and had come into contact with an active coronavirus case.

A communications campaign is to be rolled out across television, print and social media to assure people that the app only has one job — to help health officials trace close contacts of coronavirus cases.

It will also detail “very significant” privacy protections Mr Morrison insists will be in place.

“It’s got one job. Just one job. We’re not having it do other jobs. It will never do other jobs. It’s for a time-limited period. It has the specific job of helping public health officials help you. Help them help you,” Mr Morrison said.

“There is no geolocation. There is no tracking of people’s movements. None of that is true.

“You want to help nurses, you want to help paramedics, you want to help doctors and say thank you for the great job they’re doing? Then you can help them by supporting and downloading the app, which will be released soon.”

Josh Frydenberg has enlisted Australia’s major business leaders to support the app as the nation plots its way out of the coronavirus crisis. The Treasurer raised the app at a meeting with key players such as Ai Group, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry earlier this week, amid concerns not enough people would download the contact-tracing tool.

The Australian understands the groups were largely supportive because the app is seen as key to getting the economy back up.

The app, which will allow greater tracing of the coronavirus, is one of three key measures Mr Morrison said must be in place by mid-May in order for state govern­ments to consider easing social-distancing restrictions. A more extensive testing regime and a ­bolstered local response to contain any outbreaks were also paramount.

Australia is one week in to a four-week timeline set by national cabinet to begin looking at scaling back shutdown measures.

Department of Health secretary Caroline Edwards told a Senate committee scrutinising the government’s response to the corona­virus pandemic that privacy was a key priority and user data would be accessible only to state or territory health officials.

The app for mobile phone users would allow health authorities to alert Australians if they had come close to positive COVID-19 cases by using Bluetooth data, which recorded digital “handshakes” with other phones.

“When you first download the app, the only thing shared is your name, age range and your postcode, which goes to a national store and that’s how you get allocated your unique identifier,” Ms Edwards said.

While Health Minister Greg Hunt has previously said the app’s efficacy was dependent on at least 40 per cent of the population downloading it, Ms Edwards said no “base level” was required but “the bigger the uptake, the bigger the impact”, and any downloads would be useful to health professionals on the frontline.

Modelling of 17 countries to have already rolled out similar apps, conducted by global consultant Kearney, showed the most any country had managed to achieve was a 20-25 per cent take-up.
Ms Edwards said the government had been working with the source code used to build a similar Singaporean app and alongside Apple and Google for a tool that was uniquely suited to the Australian context.

Attorney-General Christian Porter pledged to take regulatory action to prevent law enforcement agencies at state and federal levels from accessing information collected via the app, but Digital Rights Watch chair Lizzie O’Shea said the assurance was “wholly inadequate” because it was unclear whether the government could “wall off” the app from powers available to law enforcement.

State governments have been asked to run their own ad campaigns, with South Australian premier Steven Marshall confirming it would urge residents to download the app and put to rest any privacy concerns.

“It will be incredibly helpful for us,” SA’s chief medical officer Nicola Spurrier said.

“It will be a really key part of being able to do our contact tracing that will allow us very quickly to get hold of people if they have been in contact with a known case. That protects the individual who has been in contact with the case but it also has a wider community protection as well.”

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: DAVID PENBERTHY