Exemption delivers political riches

THE federal government wanted a privacy debate and it is getting it. When Minister for Privacy and Freedom of Information Brendan O'Connor cites a 2008 Australian Law Reform Commission report to justify his sudden interest in privacy reform as it relates to the media, the government shouldn't be surprised when journalists point out that the same report had far more strident criticisms about political parties exempting themselves from privacy laws and the need to change that situation.

On Thursday night Communications Minister Stephen Conroy appeared on The Nation on Sky News. He made several misleading statements about political party use of invasive voter tracking software, which would be illegal were it not for the privacy exemptions politicians have voted to give themselves.

Conroy started by saying: "We are engaged in politics, we are not for profit, we are not seeking to profit off the personal information that is collected. There are stringent rules around how it should be accessed."

Actually there are no rules about how political parties compile and use the data they obtain about citizens, that's the whole point. They are exempted from privacy laws.

Citizens have no right to access what they have compiled about them, no way of checking its accuracy. Staff logging information against people's names can't be traced. Even if you have been defamed by what is entered into the database, you have no way of issuing proceedings because how would you find out about it?

As for the notion that political parties are not seeking to profit from the personal information collected, maybe not directly as a commercial enterprise would, but they are certainly seeking to profit politically.

The whole purpose of the invasive software is to help politicians win elections so that they can secure ministerial salaries, entitlements, and access to the reins of power that entitles them to, among other things, appoint whom they like to government boards. (Before they do, they can scroll through their databases

to ensure the person doesn't use the secrecy of the ballot box to

vote the other way.)

But there is a far more direct financial benefit for political parties from databases.

Each MP receives a taxpayer-funded training allowance for their electorate staff, to the tune of thousands of dollars. Each main party runs regular training seminars on the operation of their databases: Feedback for the Coalition, Electrac for the Labor Party.

Sometimes as many as 100 staff attend full-day training sessions, which the parties (or companies owned by the parties) run, charging exorbitant fees.

It is a backdoor way that Australia's main parties funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer-funded parliamentary entitlements into campaign budgets. They may not make a profit out of what they get, as Conroy says, because they go on to spend it. But it's still a dodgy business.

Conroy made it clear: "I have

no problem with the exemption

[to the privacy act] as it stands today . . . I am relaxed."

Of course he is; why wouldn't he be? It excludes him and his parliamentary mates from the privacy rules that apply to the rest of us. As if their right to defame by using parliamentary privilege wasn't enough.

About halfway through the discussion on Thursday night, Conroy's conspiracy theory set in as to why I and others are questioning main party exemptions to the privacy act. "I am enjoying News Limited leaping on this to try and use it as a defence to run against the privacy potential legislation that's coming. It should be seen for exactly what it is. It's just a sideline to try and distract."

Here I was thinking that when a debate about privacy is called for it just might be allowed to be more than a one-sided exercise.

Far from suddenly becoming concerned about this issue, I have been writing about party databases since 2003, and first did so for that well-known Murdoch mouthpiece, The Sydney Morning Herald, under the headline: "X files are keeping odds stacked in favour of MPs".

My first radio interview on the subject was for that broadcaster well known for being part of

the vast right-wing conspiracy, the ABC. And the most number of words I have devoted to the ins and outs of voter-tracking software and why it is an affront to our liberal democracy are in that populist rag, the Australian Journal of Political Science, and an unpublished PhD dissertation.

It's some conspiracy.

And who first informed me about party databases? None other than Conroy's mentor, former senator Robert Ray, who I interviewed for my thesis.

The Communications Minister's defence of one rule for politicians and another one for the rest of us took an unusual turn as Sky News political editor David Speers pressed him on the issue: "You would be very relaxed if you actually saw the state of the information [contained in the database]," Conroy said. Why? Because parties are so incompetent as to not make full use of the privacy exemptions they have granted themselves or because the information isn't very accurate?

While I can believe incompetence prevents Labor from making better use of its right to bypass privacy laws and operate invasive voter-tracking software effectively -- considering the incompetence of the government across a range of policy scripts -- that's hardly the best justification for letting the exemption stand.

Conroy worked hard on Thursday night to give the impression of a beat-up regarding the invasiveness of party databases, laughing off the idea that there is much value in them for the main parties.

Which prompts the rather obvious question: why, therefore, are they colluding to preserve

the privacy exemptions that allow them to keep operating such supposedly useless software?

For a government that regularly seeks to preserve the privacy of the commercial decision-making (or lack thereof) surrounding policies such as the National Broadband Network, the legal advice for plain packaging of tobacco products and the expected revenue from the sale of digital spectrum, it is remarkably cavalier about infringing on the privacy rights of the public.

Malcolm Turnbull also appeared on The Nation on Thursday, chiming in to downplay the use of databases by pointing out: "you will supplement [Australian Electoral Commission] information from time to time". The comment was an impressive understatement from someone who tagged more voters in the Feedback system at the 2007 election than any other Liberal as he spent up big to save his seat.

The government wanted a privacy debate and it is getting one. It's a good thing that these issues are hitting the headlines.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.