Get your own house in order on privacy, Gillard told

The Gillard government has been urged to remove exemptions that allow political parties to operate highly sophisticated voter-tracking systems.

FORMER federal privacy commissioner Malcolm Crompton has urged the Gillard government to remove from the Privacy Act exemptions that allow political parties to operate highly sophisticated voter-tracking systems.

Mr Crompton said Labor should look to its own behaviour if it wanted any action on privacy and the media to be taken seriously.

"What is good for the goose should be good for the gander," he told The Weekend Australian yesterday. "They have databases which are the best, most complete, data collection systems anywhere in the country.

"And we pay for it, you and me, the taxpayers."

Privacy Act exemptions allow political parties to receive electronic copies of the electoral roll that are updated monthly by the Australian Electoral Commission. The information they receive on every voter includes contact details, occupation and age.

It gives parties the basic information they need to begin compiling a more detailed picture of each voter, including issues of interest and voting intentions, all without people's consent. Labor's system is called Electrac; the Coalition's is Feedback.

Mr Crompton, who as federal privacy commissioner opposed the exemption for political parties when it was included in legislation in 2000, said Julia Gillard was being opportunistic in seeking reform.

"Because it's suddenly flavour of the month to talk about privacy issues, the government wants to," he said.

"Then it's also time to consider all the other problems with privacy laws, including political party exemptions."

The 2008 Australian Law Reform Commission report on privacy, the basis of the government's plan for a discussion paper on a legal right to privacy, also recommends removal of political party exemptions from privacy legislation "in the interests of promoting public confidence in the political process".

"You don't hear the government mentioning that, do you?" Mr Crompton said.

The ALRC report notes: "There is an argument that exempting political parties entrenches the advantages of incumbency, contrary to the best interests of representative democracy."

The newly elected Labor government was the only party to make a submission to the ALRC in 2007, opposing removal of political exemptions.

The ALP argued: "The exemption for registered political parties under the Privacy Act is essential to the conduct of election campaigns and facilitates the effective communication of the policies, ideas and visions which underpins our democratic processes."

The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre in its submission notes: "Most individuals, if they were aware of the increasingly sophisticated database operations of political parties, would see them as one of the clearest examples of information processing that needs the protection of the privacy principles."

Political parties are exempt from privacy laws, so they can compile information without people's consent, yet because they are regarded under law as private organisations they are also exempt from freedom of information rules that would give the public a mechanism for accessing information that political parties have on them.

The ALRC report states that its recommendation to include political parties under privacy laws "accords with a number of comparable overseas jurisdictions."