Coronavirus: Employers want power over COVIDSafe app

Employers are seeking the right to require employees to download the COVIDSafe app as a condition for returning to work.

The CovidSafe app has reached 5.1 million downloads.

Employers are seeking the right to require employees to download the COVIDSafe app as a condition of returning to work, claiming the Morrison government had been “timid” in not obliging workers to have the app on their mobile phones.

Despite a full-court press from national leaders, Australia is more than a million downloads shy of the app uptake target of 40 per cent of adult smartphone users on the eve of national cabinet, which is set to outline its new plan for easing social distancing restrictions.

NSW Business Chamber chief Stephen Cartwright told The Australian employers should have a legal right to require­ returning workers to show they had downloaded the app and were using it.

“As the head of the business community in the biggest econo­mic state in the country, I am sitting here thinking we have done such an amazing job flattening the curve in terms of the health crisis, what are the things we can logic­ally do to minimise the economic pain on citizens of this country, and I would have thought this one is a no-brainer,” he said.

Mr Cartwright said employers were liable to take all steps to ­provide a safe place at work and making­ the app mandatory for employees would enhance that capability. “I am not sure why we are being so timid, given the $4bn a week of economic loss that we are suffering. Why am I not allowed to insist on it when I am trying to make my workplace safe?

“What is the government so scared of that they are saying under no circumstances can I as an employer mandate the use of it?

“If companies could say to their staff, ‘the single condition that I’m going to let you come back to work is you have got to show me you’re using the app’, we’ll get to the (target) easily and then the economy can start to open up again.”

ACTU secretary Sally­ Mc­Manus­ said employers should not have the power to force workers to download the app. “Healthcare unions support this app because they believe it will save lives,” she said. “I’ve downloaded the app and I would recommend everyone else do the same, but it is a personal choice and employers­ do not, and should not, have the power to force people to download it.”

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said on Wednesday that the number of downloads had reached 5.1 million. The national cab­inet­ is understood to be using a baseline of 16 million adult smartphone users, which leaves 1.3 million downloads to go to reach the benchmark the government had in mind before easing restrictions.

The government is understood to be more concerned about the trajectory of download take-up rather than the overall number, and Dr Kelly said on Wednesday that the app’s take-up was the fastest of any Australian app to reach five million downloads.

However, securing the remaining numbers before nation­a­l cabinet meets on Friday may be more difficult, with privacy experts warning that many Australians continue to harbour a deep mistrust­ of government collecting their data, driven in part by well-publicised recent episodes of data mismanagement and in part by an ingrained suspicion of authority.

“Some Australians have looked at this COVIDSafe app issue closely and are concerned about the specifics, like the fact that the source coding hasn’t been released for scrutiny by experts,” said privacy consultant Anna Johnston, a former deputy NSW privacy commissioner. But most have a more fundamental question to answer, which is whether they are willing to comply with a request for inform­ation from government.

“This gives rise to a concern in Australia more than in many other countries. There are differences across demographics, in­clud­­ing gender, age, ethnicity and country of origin or birth.” Studies show women are less likely than men to comply with government requests for information, and older people less likely than younger ones.