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Higher Education Support Amendment (Maximum
Payment Amounts and Other Measures) Bill 2012
Introduced into the House of
Representatives on 12 September 2012
Portfolio: Innovation, Industry, Science, Research and Tertiary Education
1.2
This bill:
- amends the Higher
Education Support Act 2003 (HESA) to update the maximum payment amounts for
Other Grants and Commonwealth Scholarships, to account for changes in
indexation and to add the next funding year (Schedule 1);
- amends the Australian
Research Council Act 2001 to update appropriation amounts to apply
indexation and to insert a new funding cap for the last year of the forward
estimates (Schedule 2);
- amends the HESA
to permit a wider disclosure of information (including personal information)
obtained or created for the purposes of the HESA, to a range of entities, for
the purposes of assessing, amongst other things, the impact of the Government’s
higher education and VET reforms and to conduct surveys of staff, student and
former student. (Schedule 3).
1.3
The statement of compatibility notes that the updates to the Other
Grants and Commonwealth Scholarships in schedule 1 of the bill advances the
right to education in article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
1.4
The statement also identifies that the measures relating to the use and
disclosure of information contained in schedule 3 of the bill engages the right
to privacy in article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR).
1.5
Article 17 of the ICCPR provides that no one shall be subjected to
arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy. Collecting, using,
storing, disclosing or publishing personal information amounts to an
interference with privacy. In order for the interference not to be
‘arbitrary’, the interference must be for a legitimate objective and be
reasonable, necessary and proportionate to that objective.
1.6
The statement states that the information-sharing measures in the bill
are aimed at the legitimate objective of improving the provision of higher
education or vocational education and training and for research relating to the
provision of higher education and training, including research relating to
quality assurance or planning the provision of higher education or vocational
education and training. According to the statement, personal information,
including use of the Commonwealth Higher Education Student Support Number, is
also required to construct accurate and robust survey sample frames to assess
the quality of teaching and learning.
1.7
The statement provides the following reasons for concluding that any
interference with the right to privacy is reasonable, necessary and proportionate
to those objectives:
- Disclosure is
limited to a defined set of entities and information may only be disclosed for
the permitted purposes prescribed in the bill;
-
All higher
education and vocational education and training providers must ensure that
their privacy agreements are up to date and meet legislative requirements and
that privacy notices provided to students meet the requirements of the Privacy
Act 1988;
- The Secretary of
the Department may only disclose information provided by a higher education or
a VET provider to the staff of the other providers or other bodies or
associations determined by the Minister if the provider consents to that
disclosure;
- The measures
contain provisions whereby it is an offence for the people to whom HESA
information is disclosed to use HESA information for a purpose that is not a
permitted purpose or to disclose HESA information to external bodies where it
is personal information or VET personal information;
- Groups to whom
personal information is disclosed will be required to comply with
confidentiality and information-handling requirements specified in the Higher
Education Data Protocols.
- Where personal
information is disclosed to a third party engaged by the Department to conduct
surveys of staff, students or former students, this will be under a contract of
services that requires the third party act to act as though it were an agency
bound by the Privacy Act.
1.8
The committee considers that these provisions are unlikely to raise
issues of incompatibility with the right to privacy given that any interference
with the right to privacy would appear to be necessary to achieve the stated
objectives of improving the provision of higher education or vocational
education and training, which can be considered to be legitimate objectives.
Further, the provisions appear to be drafted with sufficient precision and
contain appropriate safeguards to ensure that the degree of interference is
proportionate to those objectives.
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