Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was very vocal in Senate estimates this week on the issue of individual right to privacy.
Senator Conroy first targeted Facebook for its changes to privacy rules, giving the social networking site greater freedom to use personal information.
He then went on to lambast Google for obtaining and using details of people’s wireless internet connections during the exhaustive Google maps streetview collection process.
Senator Conroy says Google considers itself to be above government, and that Google considers they are the appropriate people to make the decisions about people’s private data.
Senator Conroy considers this relatively minor breach of privacy to be a grave injustice to the Australian people.
And yet there is a fundamental privacy issue that Senator Conroy has not been so vocal about. An issue that some would argue is far more concerning and threatening to individuals than photo sharing on Facebook or serial numbers of equipment picked up by Google. This privacy issue affects us all and many people still do not know about it.
Australian banks send your most personal, confidential, financial data overseas for processing, and don’t tell you about it.
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In an incredible display of sentiment against the banks, we have seen tens of thousands of people join up to the class action over unfair fees in the past week. For bank workers who have to face unhappy customers at the front line this is no surprise.
Fees are always going to be unpopular; but if they exceed the actual costs that banks incur and don’t directly correlate to service provision, then people have a right to feel annoyed.
Banks are feeling the pressure. After the release of our survey results earlier this month, which showed a great deal of support for stronger regulations of bank behaviour, the class action case against unfair fees is yet another wake up call to banks who think they can charge excessive fees without repercussions. Read more »
In last night’s budget the Federal Government announced a commitment to expanding Australia’s finance industry as part of the broad theme of wanting Australia to become a financial services global leader.
The Finance Sector Union has welcomed these announcements. In particular:
· The focus on lifting competition and increasing investment through the lowering of withholding tax;
· Promoting savings through the 50% cut in tax on interest bearing savings;
· Increasing our Superannuation pool of funds;
· The adoption of recommendations from the Johnson Report into making Australia a financial hub
