Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Production of documents

InsightsVictoria

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (10:19): I move motion 779:

That this house:

(1) notes that InsightsVictoria reports to the Premier’s private office as the ‘single source of truth’, monitoring everything from social media sentiment to credit card transactions and beyond;

(2) further notes that InsightsVictoria has been allocated $4.4 million in the 2022–23 state budget;

(3) in accordance with standing order 11.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, within three weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution:

(a) a complete list of what the Premier and the Premier’s private office has accessed via InsightsVictoria, including the:

(i) subject matters accessed;

(ii) dates of access; and

(iii) geographical areas upon which reports have been accessed;

(b) all correspondence, including emails, to or from the Premier’s private office that relate to InsightsVictoria; and

(c) an organisational chart of the management of InsightsVictoria.

I want to be very clear on how this has come about. This is an FOI that the opposition did during the late 2020–21 period. The government fought the release of this information bitterly, and it was only after intervention by VCAT and orders that the government was prepared finally to release some of the information. Much information is still redacted and is still being fought at VCAT. I want to be quite clear that the government also sought to use a jurisdictional argument to initiate further proceedings on four important FOIs, the InsightsVictoria one being one of them. This relates to the minutes, which is the way we became aware of the way government was operating this so-called InsightsVictoria. It has now become the name that has been given to it but that was not the case at the time of the FOI. It came around through the FOI that sought the mission control or coordination committee of the state at the time, the establishment of the InsightsVictoria group and the collation of enormous quantities of data and information.

We are all familiar with the concepts of big data, and clearly that is part of what is going on here. But it is true to say that government also has access to additional information that is available in the public domain, so this is sensitive, personal information—information about medical records, information about a whole range of other detailed matters concerning individual areas of geography in the state. The collation of this information, I think, is something that needs very, very firm protections. Victorians deserve those assurances. They deserve to understand what is happening. They deserve to understand the purposes and uses to which this material is being put. They need to understand who can access it and why. A single FOI is not sufficient to understand that fully, although in the end the government was forced to release some significant chunks of information.

It is interesting to look at a chart that was provided to us. This is about frequently asked questions:

Where is the data sourced from?

… including departments across WoVG. See source notes on charts and metrics to see specifics about each.

…

• Insights Victoria is updated seven days a week with the mostly current available data. Data sources that are available daily (e.g. health COVID case numbers) are updated each day, whereas other sources are updated weekly (e.g. consumer transaction data) or monthly (e.g. a range of the Australian Bureau of Statistics data).

• Each chart and metric is marked with a date timestamp so users can see how current it is.

…

• InsightsVictoria has been designed to be the single source of truth across WoVG, and a central credible reference source.

• Data presented … is undergoing validation and alignment with existing reporting processes—

this was in 2020 when this document was produced—

Approved figures can be provided by the identified accountable policy area.

• If you are seeing conflicting information …

and it goes on. The access to this is laid out in a chart that was provided: attachment C, as it is called, ‘Role-based access maintains security whilst enabling better decisions’. The Premier’s private office is the only group in the state that has full access. They have standard access and all sensitive access. That is the Premier’s private office and operational leaders. I understand that it has since been revealed that the chief health officer and the Chief Commissioner of Police are amongst those who also have access. But compliance and enforcement operational reports, health operational reports, compliance and enforcement domain and all other domains are available to the Premier’s private office and the Premier. Ministerial offices are excluded from a number of domains, although the private office, Victorian public service senior executives and what is described as ‘VPS with demonstrated need’ are able under certain circumstances to access some of this, as can VPS with demonstrated need.

The real question is why the privileged access to the Premier and the Premier’s office, why the concentration of this information at such a level. Clearly the government is investing more and more into this agency. It is investing more and more, kicking off in the COVID period but rolling over to a permanent state where the data is collected. It is quite interesting to see one of the printouts that I have access to—you can see enormous data down to quite local geographic areas. This data can be used quite malevolently if chosen. Obviously data collection can be used for good purposes too, but I think what Victorians would want to see here are proper checks and proper balances and to understand who has this privileged access. The Premier and the Premier’s private office have this privileged, private access, the only group that appear to have unrestricted access other than the Chief Commissioner of Police and the chief health officer.

But it seems that highly privileged access needs to be seen in the context of the Premier’s misbehaviour on a number of these points before. We saw the red shirts—the use of public money for campaigning purposes—and the government was forced to pay back almost $500 000 of money that had been taken from the people of Victoria and misused for Labor Party campaigning purposes. I do not believe that any Victorian can have confidence that this data is not being used for campaign purposes. I do not believe any Victorian can have confidence that the Premier’s private office staff are not accessing this data to inform electorate-level decisions by the Australian Labor Party. The closeness of the Premier’s private office to the ALP campaign machine is well understood, and the fact is that the access to this data is not being vetted or controlled. They have unlimited, unrestrained access to this information, and I think that is chilling.

In a newspaper on the weekend I described this as a dystopian approach. I said that this has all the hallmarks of a brave new world. It has all the hallmarks of Big Brother looking down. It suits the Premier’s personality to have all that control and power, but I think most Victorians would want to see proper checks and balances there. There are no such checks and balances on this, and that is why with this documents motion today we are seeking details, as I have outlined in the motion, of the subject matters accessed, the dates of access and the geographic areas in which reports have been accessed by the Premier’s office.

This goes back to mid 2020 when the early versions of the agency were initially operating. It is clearly in the public interest for us to understand what the Premier and his office are doing here and what uses they are putting this data to. As I say, data of this type can be used for benevolent purposes, but it can also be used for malevolent purposes. I feel very strongly that the Premier needs to be reined in on this. We need to find out what is going on. I think most Victorians on the weekend found this a significant shock. People may laugh at this, but the fact is that the government has form on this: misusing taxpayers money for party political campaigning. What protections are there that this data is not being used by the Australian Labor Party for campaigning purposes? I say that that is a legitimate question, and I think that the community are entitled to ask these questions. It is in the public interest that these documents be released, and I would ask for the house’s support on this important matter.

Ms SHING (Eastern Victoria) (10:30): Following Mr Davis is always a curious challenge because on the one hand I am tempted to use the time that I have available to me to point out just how little he seems to know about data, but on the other hand I am driven to actually clarify the way in which data-sharing platforms operate and the way in which data is gathered, collated, stored and used. I am going to yield to the temptation of responding to Mr Davis’s ignorance though on data before I move to the substantive nature of the motion itself, and I anticipate that Mr Davis will get to his feet to raise a point of order about the fact that this is a relatively narrow motion and in fact it relates to the provision of documents in the terms sought and as drafted. Before you do that, Mr Davis, I would like to in fact quote you back at yourself in the context of everything else you have said. You have quoted George Orwell. You have quoted yourself. You have quoted a range of other sources and primary documents, and what you have done is go right to the heart of this subject matter. So I would hope that with the time I have available you are not going to get to your feet and try on the standard line that you do around saying that this is actually just about documents provision.

I do, however, want to take you back, Mr Davis, to 2017—not that long ago, but we did have a data-sharing debate and discussion on data-sharing legislation in this very place. It was Mr Rich-Phillips, a colleague of yours, Mr Davis, rather uncomfortably for you I am going to suggest, who said at the time:

… the capacity for government to harness big data, be it government data or be it data brought in from outside to drive policy decisions within government, is incredibly exciting, is incredibly valuable for policy development, and should be encouraged.

So that is a really, I suppose, uncomfortable tension that exists with what you are saying here today, Mr Davis, what you have quoted back from yourself, and I am surprised you did not talk about yourself in the third person when you got to your feet today, just to bed down the validity of what you talked about in the Herald Sun over the weekend.

What I would like to do, though, is to invite you to go back to that particular debate and invite you to go back to the way in which that legislation was brought before this chamber and the way in which your colleagues stood here and praised the need for use of data in order to effect better decision-making—more efficient, more fair, more equitable and more transparent decision-making in the use of data. And if we were to listen to you here today, Mr Davis, we would be tempted to conclude that in fact data of a sensitive nature means that somehow somebody knows what it is that you are doing in your government car out of hours, where you are going, who you are meeting with and the sorts of activities that you are getting up to. That might be of concern to you—that in fact people have access to information about what you get up to in your spare time, perhaps using government resources. What I would like to do, though, is to clarify—just for avoidance of any doubt or any concern that you might have personally, Mr Davis, in that particular regard—that this is anonymised data. Much as you might like to think that this is about the use of your data, where you are going, who you are seeing and what resources you are using, this is actually about anonymised data to assist in decision-making.

When I listen to you talk about InsightsVictoria being an agency, what that does yet again is betray your abject ignorance of the way in which this framework works. InsightsVictoria is not an agency, it is a data-sharing platform. So when you can understand the difference between the two, maybe come back and let us have a conversation which indicates that you have actually done even a skerrick of homework around the way in which information is gathered and the way in which contemporary data-sharing platforms operate across the state. Let us talk about the way in which big data is in fact used by governments in best practice for pandemic response. Let us talk about the way in which this has enabled access by the emergency management commissioner. I note that you missed him when you were talking about who has access to this data. Andrew Crisp has got access to it. The police commissioner has got access to it. The chief health officer has got access to it. Yet curiously you have ignored those elements of the use of data around large-scale movement, around the changes of patterns of collective movement and behaviour, in order to make decisions that meet resourcing needs and challenges associated with pandemic response and emergency management response.

What you have done, and it is so predictable, is you have just homed right in on your narrative about us living in some form of tinfoil hat universe where George Orwell runs the show and where in fact you could not backflip fast enough from what it is that your colleague said back in 2017 about these things actually being a really good idea for the purpose of enhanced, modernised, contemporary, transparent and respectful engagement with data.

One of the other things that I want to note just in terms of the height of irony is that Mr Davis has quoted himself as appearing in newspapers over the weekend, but when you go to access those articles in the newspapers, here is what you have to do. You have to agree to the use of information for various purposes that are determined by that newspaper outlet—by the platform which it uses to function—and to give over various of your personal details for other purposes. This is about targeted advertising. This is about behavioural advertising. This may in fact be about dark patterns. It may in fact be about promotion across various social media platforms. This is in fact a perfect example of how it is that we are looking at the distinction between industry and business on the one hand and the comparative lack of privacy regulation in that space and the emergence of a discussion and a discourse on how it is that the consumer law might be in a better position to address these issues, the way in which algorithms are developed and are modelled, the way in which test data is collected, the way in which troubleshooting occurs and the way in which evolutions of an algorithm over time can identify bias and discrimination and can identify breaches of privacy.

Mr Davis, you do not care about that because you do not know anything about it. What you do do, though, is quote from articles that people cannot access unless they agree to share their own data. Mr Davis, cookies are not just an item that is served in the cafe here at Parliament. Cookies are in fact a way of gathering information that you never seem to have had a problem with until now, in the form of a platform that has enabled people—both people out there, for all I know—to access what it is that you have had to say in quoting yourself and quoting George Orwell and talking about dystopia. It is breathtaking in the extreme that we have a motion here today drafted and brought by somebody who does not understand how data works; whose colleagues supported data-sharing legislation; who refuses to acknowledge the benefits, the efficiencies, the fairnesses and the equities occasioned by the use of data; and who refuses to acknowledge and is wilfully blind to the idea that anonymised data is in fact what we are talking about here—that it is not sensitive information, as you would have the world see, Mr Davis. This is not about News of the World bugging a dead woman’s phone. This is not about the sorts of disgraceful behaviours that we have seen that have caught headlines around the world. This is about anonymised information for the purpose of ensuring better access to decision-making for governments, who have a responsibility to use tools available in a modern world where technology is evolving at the speed of light.

If we were to listen to Mr Davis in this regard, we would still have an environment where Hansard was recorded on vellum, where in fact the lights were candles and where in fact women were not able to be in this chamber. If we were to listen to Mr Davis, data would have no role in the way in which government does its work. Quite frankly he is living in la-la land, because if we are to keep pace with the large-scale demands of responses to pandemics, responses to emergencies, delivery of efficiency mechanisms in frontline emergency work and making sure that services go to the areas where they are needed, we need this data. And it is not just us, it is governments all around Australia. It is not just state and territory governments, it is the commonwealth government. It is not just about sitting on our hands and refusing to engage in the discussions about machine learning, AI and other platform evolutions to deliver and to develop algorithms around data, it is actually about doing the right thing. So if Mr Davis could for just one second put aside tacky motions like this and engage in the subject matter of what data does, what it is capable of doing and the way in which it is able to improve the lives and opportunities of and reduce the risks, damages, dangers and losses for Victorians, he might be really well placed to have a say on how it is that we can continue the beneficial work around data and data use in this state. What a travesty, Mr Davis, you are. We oppose this motion.

Ms BURNETT-WAKE (Eastern Victoria) (10:40): I rise to speak on Mr Davis’s motion 779. It was recently revealed that Premier Daniel Andrews has a data agency, InsightsVictoria, that monitors the everyday activities of Victorians, including their social media moves and credit card transactions. We knew about the Big Build, the big bill and the big budget blowouts, but Victorians did not know that the Premier has been spying on them like Big Brother. Victorians have been in a real-life game of Big Brother since August 2020, but the game is not one they signed up to.

InsightsVictoria is yet another initiative that the Andrews government have cooked up behind closed doors and kept from the people it impacts most. The government have come out and said that it is just about collecting anonymised data and that protections are in place, but before data is anonymised it is in raw form, and this raises questions about data sovereignty and where this data is stored. The servers—are they onshore, are they offshore, are they secure? There are very big questions about that.

Victorians deserve to know the government is collecting this data, and they deserve to know how it is being used. The only reason we have all learned about this database was a lengthy fight under freedom-of-information laws. The Premier would rather this be kept from Victorians, which really begs the question: what else is the government hiding? If it was really just about anonymised data, why was this kept from Victorians? The news of this database is quite astonishing. Why on earth does a government need to know what Victorians share on their personal social media accounts? Why does it need to know what Victorians are spending their money on? They have yet again cited the COVID-19 pandemic as why this database was introduced. Our social media posts and what we spend our money on has nothing to do with COVID-19 or our health.

The database is now said to be evolving to support government decision-making as we emerge from the pandemic. In other words, Big Brother is here to stay. What we do know about this platform is that the data is accessible by a range of public servants in the Premier’s private office. The Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton, also has access to this data, as does chief health officer Brett Sutton, emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp and an array of Mr Andrews’s private staff. This alone shows the data is much more than some innocent analytics. It is being shared across the board with agencies, and Victorians have no power over where their information is going. What is worse, this was kept a secret and we did not know this was happening.

These are not the actions of a transparent and ethical government. They are not the actions of a government for the people. Given they have been collecting all this data, it is unfortunate that they miraculously missed the parts about the 000 crisis, ambulance ramping and the strain on our hospitals. They refuse to acknowledge the data when the opposition asks questions in this chamber. The government’s Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Ms D’Ambrosio, recently said in the media:

… all governments utilise anonymised data to inform their decisions, to inform their programs, to make sure that the best decisions are made in terms of government operations …

If that were the case, our 000 service and ambulance delays would have been addressed long ago. This is not new data. We have lost 21 Victorians in the last six months. If this data were being collected to make the best decisions, we would have seen some significant changes for the healthcare system, for mental health and for small business. Instead Victorians got secrecy, spin and deceit.

The Leader of the Government should table in this Council a complete list of what the Premier and his private office have been accessing on this platform. Victorians will be particularly interested to know what subject matters have been accessed and when, and what areas of Victoria have been targeted specifically. Victorians are over the secrecy and the cover-ups. They deserve to know what their government is up to. I commend this motion.

Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:45): I just want to clarify again for the opposition before I proceed to respond to this motion that InsightsVictoria is not an agency. You said it again, and we do need to be accurate as we are talking about facts. So just to be really clear about what InsightsVictoria is, InsightsVictoria is a secure digital reporting platform. It was established to provide anonymised reporting of public health trends in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. InsightsVictoria sits in the Victorian Centre for Data Insights under the Department of Premier and Cabinet. So if we can adhere to facts within this debate, that would be much appreciated.

It is no secret that data analytics is a central capability for any modern-day government. New South Wales and the ACT have data analytics centres. The federal government has a number of data capabilities within departments, including the Australian Bureau of Statistics. New Zealand boast that they are leading the world with their use of data integration for research and analysis, and the US government is reportedly undertaking one of the largest transformation initiatives in decades so federal agencies can utilise data-driven decision-making. The COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented, and governments across the world had to move quickly to respond to public health and economic situations that were unfolding.

The Harvard Business Review did an analysis of the pandemic responses of Germany and Italy. The death rate in Germany was lower, and the article suggests that their use of a digital reporting registry allowed them to track the availability of beds and ventilators, easing the pressure on ICU beds. Many other countries used dashboard reporting to monitor the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic because the situation was volatile and wide reaching, meaning it was harder for governments to get an accurate picture of what was happening in communities.

To assist with the COVID-19 response, InsightsVictoria was established. The platform—not a separate agency, so let us just be clear about that and stick to the facts in this debate; I heard the word ‘malevolent’ used before, and I am not sure how it is in any way relevant to this debate—reports on a range of public health and mobility trends so senior government staff can make informed decisions assisted by timely and relevant anonymised data. InsightsVictoria does not monitor or report on the details of individual Victorians. For the opposition to characterise this as a dystopian Big Brother exercise is not only inaccurate but dangerous. It is a gross distortion. It is inappropriate. InsightsVictoria provides anonymised aggregate-level reporting only. It is not shared outside government and has very strict protocols around access and levels of access.

The opposition cannot have it both ways. One day they claim we are digital laggards and years behind New South Wales. The next day they say we are Big Brother with a powerful, deep-dive IT system. Maybe they should get their facts straight and deal with the conflicting opinions in their own party before making sweeping incorrect claims about the government. It has already been referenced, but I am going to reiterate this point because it is actually pivotal to the discussion and the debate that we are having here now. Back in 2017 the opposition said:

… the coalition regards the sharing of data within government as an incredibly important opportunity for policy development and the analytics that go along with the management of that data …

true to your point, exactly. Does the opposition no longer believe that—that is the issue here—in 2022, when we rely on digital technology more than ever before?

The use of anonymised commercial data is not unique to the Victorian government. Using a range of aggregated datasets can provide more accurate insights. The COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented, and our health response and recovery efforts needed to be informed by the most accurate information available. The use of commercial data ceased in 2021 as it was no longer required in support of Victoria’s COVID-19 response and recovery. This is again hypocritical of the opposition—yes, I am referring back to 2017—who said:

… the capacity for government to harness big data, be it government data or be it data brought in from outside to drive policy decisions within government, is incredibly exciting, is incredibly valuable for policy development, and should be encouraged.

It is a backflip, plain and simple. We take privacy and data protection very seriously, and that is exactly what Victorians expect from their government. These safeguards are in place to protect Victorians’ data through the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 and the Victorian Data Sharing Act 2017. On top of this, InsightsVictoria operates under the Victorian Protective Data Security Standards to guide the safe, secure, lawful and ethical use of data. The Victorian Centre for Data Insights applies a range of measures to protect information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. These measures include privacy impact assessments, stringent system and data access controls, activity logging, penetration testing and security reviews. The Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner plays an important oversight role in making sure the right checks and balances are in place. With the right checks and balances in place, data can be a valuable tool for governments to make better and fairer policy decisions to improve outcomes and services for their people.

If the opposition were serious about supporting our economic recovery and repairing our health system, they would read the room. Without data we would be making decisions based on hunches and anecdotal evidence. Governments are increasingly moving towards data-driven decision-making because people expect their governments to design policies and services based on facts and statistics and not on personal opinions.

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (10:53): I do rise today about making sure that we get the information this new Premier’s private office InsightsVictoria reports and making sure that we do get all the documents and information behind this. If this government has nothing to hide, it will quite happily provide all that information. If this government has been monitoring everything from social media sentiments and collecting that kind of data from Victorians, Victorians have the right to understand what information and data has been mined and to be able to bring that forward to understand why the government is using that.

For me, I know that the community want their privacy respected. They know that this government has used a massive propaganda campaign against them during these COVID times. I must say, having listened to some of the government’s contributions today and the words that I have heard thus far, there are no Victorians that actually trust this Andrews government in the way of their having the information of their private data. They are worried about the way that they are monitoring Victorians’ social media accounts.

So for me, we have witnessed that. We have witnessed people who have put Facebook posts up, talking against or dissenting—just normal dissent—against this government about issues and concerns that they actually have, having police knock at their door. And we know we have seen pregnant women in Ballarat being arrested during this time just for saying that they would like to protest. Now, we need to have the freedom to be able to actually voice our concerns on social media. We do not need to be shadow banned via Facebook. And we want to have that information, if the government actually is getting involved in our social media accounts, because we are concerned. Victorians are concerned; they wish to have an election in November that is free from government involvement via monitoring of everything in social media and where the government is not actually then banning and shadow banning people’s voices on social media—and that has been occurring. My own Facebook account gets shadow banned quite often, and some of the things that have been pulled down are things that I have actually said in this chamber; contributions that I have made within this chamber that have been fact-checked—on Facebook they have been shadow banned. If I am a member of Parliament and Facebook as a platform can do that to me, I pity the general populace out there that just wish to have their voices heard and wish to just have their issues and concerns raised and to be able to make comments and have conversations with other people within the community about what their concerns are about this government.

I would say, from what I have heard from my constituents, they have little faith in this government handing over their private information as well as in the monitoring that this government has done on them. They want to know the kinds of monitoring and why this government has used $4 million from the Premier’s department to actually somehow possibly gather people’s private information and understand what they are doing. So for me, it is horribly concerning for my community. They want their privacy protected. They do not want to feel that the government is monitoring them.

I believe that this government should support this motion today to actually enable access. The community wants the transparency and the accountability, and if there is nothing to hide with the data that the government has been mining, why not show us? Because we have always felt—the community out there has always felt—that this government has spent a lot of time over the last two years pushing propaganda rather than actual facts, not being transparent and not showing the community where this information is actually coming from. It is not based in science and not based in common sense but is actually based on a propaganda campaign of trying to be popular and then pushing people in a certain direction, when really we would want it actually based in facts.

So for me, I hope that this government supports this documents motion. We want to have an understanding of why they have actually gone into people’s private social media accounts and want to know why people are being monitored by this government and to what level and why they are using that data. They want to understand why this government feels the need to have a whole department called InsightsVictoria to monitor them, and they want to know that this is not going to be used during this election. What information have you gathered, and are you going to be using that against people for your own benefit during this election? That is what the community want to know. They want to know that they will have some kind of fair and free state election that is not corrupted by the data that this government is mining by way of their information. They want to feel that it is not being twisted as well as that it is free from being manipulated.

The community are sick to death of being manipulated via propaganda campaigns. They just want the truth. They just want facts. They just want the information out. They do not want to feel that they are being manipulated by being monitored and being banned and being shadow banned and having the information that you are gathering turned against them to make them go down the path that you want them to go down. I would hope that the government would be absolutely accountable and transparent and provide the information immediately.

Motion agreed to.