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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 481 asked in the Legislative Council on 19 May 2022 by Hon Wilson Tucker

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

CORONAVIRUS — CONTACT TRACING SYSTEM AUDIT

481. Hon WILSON TUCKER to the Leader of the House representing the Premier:

I refer to the Auditor General's report titled COVID-19 contact tracing system — Application audit that found a number of significant weaknesses in information security controls for WA Health's public health COVID unified system—PHOCUS. The report concludes —

In the absence of State privacy legislation, and consistent with the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988, people have a right to expect that WA Health will protect the privacy of their information. In so protecting, WA Health will build trust and confidence in government and uphold the universal human right to information privacy.

Does the Premier support this conclusion?

Hon SUE ELLERY replied:

I thank the honourable member for some notice of the question.

Yes. I note WA Health's response to the report, which states —

The Department and HSS accepts all recommendations and note the report highlights many historic items that have largely been previously addressed or were issues where existing controls were strengthened. No breach of privacy has occurred in relation to the system, continuous data cleansing and quality checking is undertaken, no inaccuracies in case status impacting management were found and no inappropriate use of the system was recorded. This demonstrates the robustness of PHOCUS and that the data is well managed and secure.