The Senate inquiry into the 2016 census debacle has condemned the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ disregard for citizens’ privacy and its lack of transparency, but declined to criticise the bureau’s project to lock all Australians into a permanent surveillance process.
The report of the Senate Standing Committees on Economics inquiry into the census, initiated by Nick Xenophon, was released yesterday, with an additional report by Xenophon and his colleague Stirling Griff that goes further on privacy protections.
The committee was scathing about the ABS’ failure to undertake consultation on its plan to radically expand the census into an ongoing personal record of every citizen through the retention of names and addresses and the linking of multiple data sources about individuals.
Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.