Legislative Council
YEAR 2000 INFORMATION DISCLOSURE BILL
Adjourned debate on second reading.The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I support the Bill. I note that this, in fact, is complementary legislation to the legislation that has already passed in the Federal Parliament. I had no awareness that there had been any legislation in the Federal Parliament until this Bill landed on my desk—and I am not sure whether it was last Thursday or Friday. The letter that came with it did not say explicitly that the legislation was wanted through this week. It had `Confidential' marked all over it, so I asked one of my staff to ring and find out if the Government wanted it through this week, although I could not believe that it possibly could, and yes, the Government did. It is bizarre that we are working on such short time frames.
The only reason that I feel confident in handling the Bill now is that my Federal Party room has already been through the same debate with complementary legislation and has addressed the issues. If it had not been for that, I would have been screaming a good deal more about the expectation of putting through the legislation in the time frame that has been allowed. There is no doubt that the year 2000 bug is causing a degree of concern and there is some debate about how much it is overstated. If one adopts the precautionary principle, we have to make sure that we do not suddenly find ourselves with some important parts of State infrastructure, for instance, going down and we must also try to minimise any harm that might be done in business, where something occurs that has not been the fault of the business itself. Effectively, that is what this legislation is seeking to tackle. The Bill highlights the need for cooperation and openness as we prepare for the new millennium. It also provides an opportunity to think about the role that Government should play in the regulation of technology. This Bill gives Government departments and agencies an opportunity to be a leading example to the private sector in the year 2000 information disclosure, and that is one reason why the Democrats supported an ALP amendment to the Federal legislation. I already had similar amendments drafted, but they were passed in the House of Assembly on the way here, so that has become unnecessary. Issues raised by the millennium bug are part of a broader range of problems created by the elevation of business and technology interests over those of consumers and society generally. Some concerns have been raised about the possibility of the abuse of the disclosure rules contained in the Bill. Disclosure legislation is only one component of the year 2000 issue that needs addressing. We must also look at what can and should be done in regard to community education to ensure a prepared and informed public. If we take steps to ensure that the community is kept informed now, we will avoid problems down the track. The Government appears to have been active in that area, as well. South Australia will be the first State to pass legislation. New South Wales might have beaten us, but it looks like facing a delay of a month or two. Victoria is expected to pass its legislation when its Parliament resumes in April, with others to follow. It is true that there has been some division within the legal profession about some aspects of this legislation but, as I said, on balance, our Federal members supported the structure as proposed. Civil libertarians say that the legislation denies people the right to take action if they have been wronged, and I note that the Bill has a cut-off date of 1 July 2001. The creation of a ministry for the year 2000 has been an interesting and innovative approach to forward planning, but one question we beg at this stage is what happens after the year 2000? The Minister might have a bit of mopping up to do but he might be short of things to do beyond that. The Hon. Carmel Zollo: Or he might not. The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: No, he might not. With technology moving at such a rate, a whole range of issues need to be monitored constantly and they could engage the full-time efforts of a Minister. I was reading the New Scientist only a couple of weeks back, and it talked about the fact that we are due for the next solar maximum. We go through solar cycles and, by the number of sunspots at the moment, scientists believe this to be a particularly active cycle. The real danger is that these sunspots have the capacity to interfere with satellites. If members think about how dependent we are on satellites, they will see that it will need only one or two of them to become inoperable for there to be significant implications. It would be difficult to compare the impact with that of the year 2000. That is not the only impact. During the last solar maximum, the Quebec electricity system went down. Apparently, a solar stream of charged particles induced a current that crashed the whole system. It took the authorities quite some time to get it up again, to the extent that Quebec spent a significant amount of money to make sure that its system would not suffer that fate again. Apparently it had to do with the length of wires, and we have got involved with some long electricity wires recently. I cannot pretend to understand the problem other than noting that it caused major problems in Quebec and it had something to do with the length of the wires. Since we are wired all the way to Victoria, I do not know whether or not we could suffer a similar fate. I raise that as an example of the sort of things that might need to be addressed, as technology moves on, as our reliance upon satellites increases and as there is increasing interdependence with other States for electricity and other things. The ministry for the year 2000 could become a ministry for technology, which could be involved in forward planning in terms of the things that could potentially go wrong. There will be other things of a similar scale to the year 2000, and such a ministry could be important in terms of trying to ensure that, with respect to technology innovation in South Australia, we are staying well in front. I know that I have strayed a little bit from the Bill, but its relevance is that this legislation anticipates potential problems and reacts to them sensibly. I think that other issues of a similar nature also deserve some attention.