The House of Representatives economics committee has been caught up in a massive breach of privacy, having accidentally published the filled-out witness forms — including emails and phone numbers — of members from the federal banking watchdog set to appear before the committee next week.
Crikey noticed the breach after trying to download a media release about the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA) planned appearance before the Standing Committee on Economics this coming Monday.
Instead, the file contained the Hansard Witness Forms completed by six senior APRA staff.
Crikey alerted the committee secretariat to the privacy breach, who yelled “Oh, CRIKEY!” (yes, really).
The file has since been removed from the committee’s website.
APRA is the independent statutory authority that supervises institutions across banking, insurance, and superannuation and promotes financial system stability in Australia.
The regulator emerged from the banking royal commission with its reputation somewhat tarnished, and has since announced efforts to work more closely with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to oversee financial institutions’ governance and compliance.
Monday’s hearing is slated to discuss APRA’s 2019 Annual Report, but is expected to become a platform for discussing the recent Westpac money-laundering scandal.
Committee chair Tim Wilson said — in what we can only guess to be the press release the committee intended to upload to its website — that the committee wants to further question APRA on “its performance and operation and, in particular, how it is implementing the recommendations of the Hayne Royal Commission and the APRA capability review”.
“The Committee will scrutinise APRA on how it promotes financial stability through the prudential regulation and supervision of Authorised Deposit taking Institutions, insurers and superannuation licensees, and other related issues,” Wilson added.
Perhaps the committee will be the ones under scrutiny in light of today’s privacy breach?
By all means talk up your own story, but “massive” in the headline? We’re talking the professional contact details of six public officials. A blunder, for sure, but “massive” seems like gross hyperbole.
Forgive me for not jumping to attention next time you make a claim like that – and I do hope you can find something suitable jaw-dropping when you do get a yarn about an actual “massive” breach.
Ordinary people would not receive such generous treatment. As here, the powerful and privileged are instantly protected from even a hint of accountability, while Ministers casually smear benefits recipients in Parliament using material, often salacious, from their Centrelink records and other gossip columns.
Next time, bring yourself to say nothing, whatever favours you may want from the powerful.
Considering the level of privacy that we are all expected to adhere too..
I can understand the level of stress that this would cause, many people are unaware of how much things have changed, that you can’t just ring up & ask for information about a person anymore, there are privacy concerns around access to information that would be considered not for public consumption/use..
These types of ”errors” seem to be happening more than a little regularly, it makes one wonder whether the public service is trying to tell us that their ”masters” aren’t doing the right thing, so at this rate these glitches might just keep happening…
The system isn’t ”fool” proof…
this was no accident, this is the LNP way of bullying the witness’s letting every one know who’s appearing , LNP scare tactics the same goes for the MDB plan the, fact NSW want’s to pull out of negotiations is a deliberate ploy by LNP because they have no plans for the MDR & it would open a pandoras box re investigation, one of the biggest cover up’s by state & federal governments