Mr McMULLAN (10:09 AM) —The Year 2000 Information Disclosure Bill 1999 is warranted. It should have been introduced. The opposition is somewhat disappointed that it has been delayed. We made calls earlier for this bill to be initiated, and I think it would have been more effective in achieving its purpose had it been introduced earlier. Nevertheless, it is welcomed. The opposition broadly supports the concept of the bill—we have been calling for such a bill for some time—what the bill attempts to do and the manner in which it does it.

There have been some disappointments for us in the way the government has handled getting the bill through the parliament. Substantially, that will be reflected in our activity in the Senate—and I will come to that in a moment—by way of questions of process and a possible amendment.

We are comfortable with the process of expediting the passage of this bill. We cannot complain about something being delayed and then not try to pass it quickly, so we have cooperated with its coming to the Main Committee. We will not be proposing amendments in the House that would in any way delay the consideration. It may be—I will come to this later—that we will have to move an amendment in the Senate because we do not seem to be making any progress in getting satisfactory assurances from the government on some matters related to this that are important to us. If that is not the case, if we can get those assurances, we will cooperate in an expedited passage of the bill through the Senate. If not, the bill will go through the Senate in the normal processes. We would still deal with it as quickly as possible but the Senate's expedited hearing processes do not allow consideration of contested amendments, so we would not be able to facilitate it and meet the government's priority preference in timing.

With those original remarks, let me, first of all, go back to the background to this problem. The so-called Y2K problem—the year 2000 problem, the millennium bug—originated when program designers, for the purpose of saving memory space in programs, began to use two digits to represent the year. It is one of those decisions that go into the category of `It seemed like a good idea at the time'. It has allowed a functionally effective maximisation of space and memory within the operating computer systems throughout the part of this century when we have had the effective operation of computers.

But the circumstance has been created where, when the year 2000 is represented by double zero, there is a significant probability that most computers and systems will recognise this as the year 1900, with consequences for whether or not the system operates and the mode of its operation. It could lead to failures of one sort or another in a variety of computer systems. The member for Herbert was giving some examples and being melodramatic. Giving extra examples is unnecessary; the examples he gave were adequate to convey to all of us the magnitude of the problem. Countries around the world have been giving this consideration and responding in a variety of ways.

The second and related problem is one which this bill does not deal with—that is not really a criticism; I do not particularly think it should. We need to be aware, however, of the so-called 9 September 1999 problem. In many computer programming arrangements, 9999 is the end-program marker that operates a shutdown sequence in programs. There will be a need for people to respond to that before 9 September 1999. Let us hope we do not have a precursor to the millennium bug in that problem. There is potentially a consequent, smaller issue with 29 February 2000 because of the special circumstances of leap years at the century. That calendar coincidence may cause a third time-driven problem within the computer systems.

To have three such things within six months is an issue that the whole industry has to look at in terms of planning and programming requirements. Of those three, the one which is seen by everybody to be by far the biggest, the one we are dealing with today, is the year 2000 problem itself.

It is not a new issue; it has been recognised for a considerable period of time. Governments across countries, across jurisdictions—that is, federal, state, local—and of different political persuasions have been slow to respond. Many people in the private sector have been even slower and those who have been active and concerned about it have found the process of exhorting people to action very frustrating. Solving the Y2K problem can be seen primarily as a management challenge. Repair and replacement of systems and their interconnection take time. Ensuring that critical systems are ready for the year 2000 is a matter of prioritising what needs to be fixed.

Against that background, let us look at government response that has led to this legislation before us. It is principally driven by an initiative taken in the United States where President Clinton signed into law, on 19 October last year, the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act known in the United States as the `good Samaritan' legislation, and it has become known as this in the Australian vernacular. This act was established around three core objectives: to promote the free disclosure and exchange of information related to year 2000 readiness; to assist consumers, small businesses and local governments in effectively and rapidly responding to year 2000 problems; and to lessen burdens on interstate commerce by establishing certain uniform legal principles in connection with the disclosure and exchange of information related to year 2000 readiness. At the core of the American government's strategy is the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. This council organised a national Y2K action week in October 1998, involving more than just government organisations, and it had special Y2K publicity and education events.

That was the background and the catalyst. People around the world did not then start addressing the year 2000 problem—it had been under consideration for a long time by governments in Australia and by the private sector—they started looking at whether the legislation we have before us—and for the purpose of simplicity I will call it `good Samaritan' legislation—was appropriate for Australia.

The delay has been a bit of a disappointment to me. It took until February 1999 for the Howard government to introduce a bill to address the problem. The bill is constructed around giving limited liability protection for voluntary disclosure of information regarding the Y2K problem. It does not address all the issues in the American bill. The Australian government has taken alternative strategies to pursue some of the issues to do with information coordination, establishing means for individuals and firms to gain access to Y2K solutions. I am not sure, in the Australian system, that those are matters that are appropriately dealt with by legislation. It may well be that the alternative executive government initiatives that are being taken are more appropriate.

We should not be under any illusion about the size of the problem in Australia. ABS year 2000 problem preliminary survey results found that 43 per cent of small businesses are not undertaking Y2K protection. Only 20 per cent of all businesses have sought some form of assurances from suppliers, service providers or customers about their state of Y2K readiness and only 13 per cent had contingency plans if disruptions were to occur due to the Y2K problem. Not all that shortcoming can be attributed to the lack of this legislation. The cause is much more profound. This is a part of the solution; it is not the cause of the problem.

The Howard government seemed to realise, about the middle of last year, on 15 April 1998 when they put out a press release, that more needed to be done to fix the problem. The responsible ministers at the time, Minister Fahey and Minister Moore, said in the press release, amongst other things:

The decision to provide additional funding ($127 million) recognises that progress within Commonwealth agencies and the wider business community towards Year 2000 remediation has been slower than is necessary to meet the immovable deadline of 1 January 2000.

In spite of this extra money, at November 1998 only an average 44 per cent of business critical systems in key government areas were compliant with Y2K, according to the Office for Government Online Year 2000 Information Bulletin of January this year, whereas in the United States, at the same time, 61 per cent of federal government critical systems were Y2K compliant. That is 61 per cent in the United States, 44 per cent here. The US does not expect to be 100 per cent compliant until July 1999 and Australia seems to be behind the United States, so if our critical systems are not going to be 100 per cent compliant by July 1999, we are cutting it fine.

To be fair to the Howard government, given that I have been critical of their somewhat delayed approach—even compared to all the OECD countries we are a long way from last—we are well up with the leading countries in terms of preparedness. I do not want to create an artificial sense of crisis. Compared to most of the countries with which we would normally compare ourselves, Australia is up towards the front of the pack in being ready to deal with the year 2000 problem—and nobody has found it easy. There is no country, there is no major corporation, that has had a magic wand to solve this complex question easily. So I do not want to score cheap points. We are ahead of the pack, but I think we could have been further, and we have at least got the track record of having been raising that issue for some time before the government acted.

The Howard government expects Y2K compliance costs for the Commonwealth to be around $600 million, as I understand it. The US government estimates it will spend $6.4 billion to fix its mission critical systems. So I am surprised at the $600 million figure and I am surprised that $127 million of extra spending has been seen to be sufficient. But let us reaffirm, despite those differences, our continuing support for initiatives to cope with and respond to the Y2K problem.

We have been pushing for months, in particular during the early weeks of December last year, for a number of measures, one of which was legislation of the sort we have before us today. During that first week in December we made a couple of announcements, press releases and other statements seeking to provoke and promote `good Samaritan' legislation and Commonwealth response, through its own disclosure and otherwise, to the Y2K problem.

I am pleased we have the legislation before us; and, in what it does contain, we support it. Whether it is exactly what we would have done is really beside the point. It is substantially what any Australian government would do in responding to the same imperatives that led to the Clinton administration's year 2000 `good Samaritan' legislation. This is essentially a Westminster system style response and so, for what is in the legislation, we support it. There could be, if time was available, merit in an inquiry which would probably lead to some minor amendments, but we do not have the luxury of that time. The officers who worked on this legislation have done a good job, a good job for our country and for the government; therefore, we will support this legislation in its passage through the House and, in what it does do, we will support it in the Senate.

Our concern is with one aspect of what the bill does not do and with what we believe the Howard government have not been doing adequately. We have had some advice that they are about to respond to our concern, but it is very hard to get the confirmation that we hoped to receive. That relates to the government's own disclosure. This is a bill about Y2K disclosure, the Year 2000 Information Disclosure Bill 1999 , and it makes improvements in our legal regime to facilitate private sector disclosure to assist in matters such as supply chains, to which the member for Herbert referred. But what it does not do is guarantee to Australian business and Australian citizens that they will have adequate information about the government's own circumstances with regard to year 2000 problem disclosure. The disclosure by the government has been getting better, but it itself acknowledges it is not, at this stage, satisfactory.

In terms of critical infrastructure, it is how the government's infrastructure and systems respond that is probably going to affect most directly the lives of Australians. That issue is not addressed and should be addressed. We have electricity systems, traffic systems—as the member for Herbert said—and air traffic control systems. All of those are significantly affected by the government's state of preparedness—Commonwealth and state—but for the purpose of this legislation in this parliament, we are talking about the Commonwealth. The Office of Government Online has indicated that the infrastructure at risk includes such things as electricity, gas, water, sewerage, telephone, fax and communications, transport, flights, shipping, railways, control towers, raw materials, contracted out processing services such as payroll, which might not be quite as critical as some of the life-threatening consequences, but it is pretty important to the people who are the end-receivers, whether they are salary or benefit recipients from government, or tenderers, service providers, et cetera.

The government is aware that this is a broad and significant problem. The United States government produces a detailed report for the majority of departments detailing their level of and progress towards compliance with the Y2K problem. Until now the government has been reporting, we are advised—and I have no reason to doubt it—comprehensively to the cabinet. But attempts by parliament or the public to get access to that information have run into cabinet-in-confidence barriers. That is not satisfactory.

There may be some aspects of this information that need to be cabinet-in-confidence because they may relate to security issues. They are not the issues we are concerned about. They are important for the national interest. If there are aspects of those—I cannot immediately envisage what they might be—they are national interest issues of significance to which attention needs to be given. But all those examples of infrastructure at risk to which I referred do not fall into that category.

So what we need are quarterly reports on identification of risks in the year 2000 management plans, including milestones to be reached in the time remaining. We need to know the results to date of the full range of applicable testing activity. We need to know what the contingency and continuity management plans are. The opposition did prepare, and may need to move in the Senate, an amendment to this bill to require quarterly reports by departments and agencies. This is not something we wanted to spring as a surprise on the government. We all have concern and we all want to facilitate the passage of the legislation. So we went to the government and indicated that this was our concern. My colleague and the shadow minister assisting me in this area, Senator Lundy, has had discussions with the parliamentary secretary, Senator Campbell. They have discussed in detail the amendment and I have been involved in some of those discussions.

We were hoping that we could get support for the amendment—usually for opposition a forlorn hope—as this would have been the simplest solution. The second solution, which would have been acceptable to us and to our party—and our party room accepted this option—would have been a letter from the government to me, to Senator Lundy, or to the Leader of the Opposition, detailing the government's intention to report quarterly and comprehensively in a way that is available to the public and to the parliament, making it clear that there will be quarterly reports from departments and key agencies. The government indicated that they are going to do this. They, in fact, indicated that they were going to send us a letter. We still wait.

The way the government is handling it is a disappointment to us in process terms, but that is a second order question. We can all talk about that around here and be disappointed, as I am, but the serious question concerns how this is interfering with our preparedness to cooperate in facilitating the speedy passage of this legislation. We would prefer our amendment, in what we think is in the national interest, to facilitate speedy passage, but we will accept a letter of assurance from the government indicating that it will voluntarily meet the standards which our amendment sets down.

From what has been said to us—and I do not want to breach some confidential aspects of a discussion I had with Senator Ian Campbell—I can say that the government have indicated to us that they have no trouble meeting the standards we have set. But irony of ironies, when we were asking them to give us details about disclosure so that we can make that assurance public and then say we are satisfied with this and expedite the passage of the legislation, we could not get disclosure of the government's intentions. This is very frustrating indeed and may lead to some delay in the passage of this legislation.

That is not our intention. If we can get that assurance we are prepared to let the bill go through the Senate on a Thursday lunchtime sitting as a non-controversial bill, because in all its other elements it is non-controversial. It is not an unimportant bill but it is a non-controversial bill between the major parties and, as far as I can tell, the minor parties and Independents in the Senate, though that is a matter for them.

That is the matter that is outstanding. That is the issue that is of continuing concern to us. We continue to talk with the advisers to the government and to the private sector. We have received some very good reports from government officials, which we have appreciated, about the manner in which these issues are being handled in terms of public sector reporting and about this bill. We welcome all that. That is the way the matter should be handled. It is an issue of genuine national concern; it is not an issue of partisan concern. We, as a nation, have concern; we all have concern. Australia is making better arrangements than many other countries and we want to see those arrangements strengthened, and one part of that is the Year 2000 Information Disclosure Bill 1999 .

Come what may—and I know this weakens our negotiating position—let me make it clear, as we have to the government, that we will support the passage of this bill. Even if we do not get the assurances we want, let alone not getting the amendment we want, we will at all stages vote for this bill. The government will do its job better, and the bill will be passed more expeditiously, if we can get from it the assurances we have sought about disclosure of its operations, which it has indicated it is prepared to give. I look forward to receiving that. That will facilitate the expeditious passage of the bill.

However, we will support the bill in the Main Committee and we will support it going to the Senate unamended. Let us hope that we can get arrangements between the government and the opposition such that we can also pass the bill expeditiously through the Senate.