Page 2655 - Week 09 - Thursday, 16 September 2021
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disclosure of highly personal information that could be disclosed under the Territory Privacy Principles, as set out in the Information Privacy Act 2014.
Throughout this pandemic, Canberrans—and indeed all Australians—have been compelled by their government to comply with a significant number of public health directions, many of which have placed serious restrictions on our freedoms. Canberrans, in good faith, have placed a significant level of trust in the ACT government to do the right thing by them and by the community to ensure that any personal data that is collected about them is stored with the greatest of security and is used solely for the purposes for which it had been provided.
Canberrans have listened to the health advice. They have respected the health advice. They have supported the health advice. They have been, and are, doing the right thing. Our businesses are taking on greater levels of responsibility, whether it be ensuring that their patrons are checked in, that their staff are wearing face masks, or that their venue capacities are not exceeded so that social distancing measures can be complied with. Juggling these additional responsibilities on top of the demands of running a business, especially in this current climate, is not something the government should take for granted.
These public health measures, while integral to the safety of our community, are by no means an insignificant imposition. For the last 20 months, but especially throughout this current lockdown, the ACT government has been asking a lot of Canberrans. In doing what has been asked of it, the community has placed its trust in the government to act in its best interest. Trust in government is an essential ingredient for compliance, and this trust must also not be taken for granted. So it was deeply concerning that in July the ACT government did not hold up its end of the bargain. The Minister for Health had assured the Canberra community repeatedly that the only people in government that had access to the Check In CBR app data, which the government itself had mandated businesses collect, were ACT Health staff—and only for the purposes of contact tracing.
But when businesses began receiving letters from the Chief Minister’s directorate, citing information collected from the Check In CBR app data, to threaten businesses with fines of $5,000 for lower-than-expected check-in numbers, it became apparent that the ACT government had not been upfront with the community about how this data was being used. These threatening letters failed to account for the significant downturn caused by the Sydney lockdown, which crippled businesses right across the city—so much so that the government itself was forced to announce a tourism and accommodation support package to offset these costs only weeks later.
We must not forget the duty that we have to our community to ensure that when the government imposes new laws or regulations on our citizens it does so with the purpose and intention which had been agreed. In sharing this data across the Public Service, the government sent a clear message to businesses: we do not trust you. That was an awful insult to the many thousands of businesses that were already doing it so tough through this pandemic, and who were taking the onus to ask everyone who entered their venue to check-in and provide their personal information to the
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