Just days after quitting the federal government, Cory Bernardi has raised concerns about new laws forcing some businesses and government agencies to notify customers when their personal data had been breached.
"As an Australian conservative, I'm concerned about the regulation and red tape, I'm concerned about the lack of specificity," he told parliament, warning the new laws could place an extra burden on businesses.
Senator Bernardi has yet to vote against the government in the upper house since he quit the coalition on Tuesday to sit as an independent conservative.
He did not oppose the passage of the data breach laws on Monday, acknowledging it was inevitable given Labor support for the changes.
Under the new laws, entities already subject to privacy laws, including certain government agencies, businesses, credit providers and tax file number recipients, must notify the Information Commissioner and affected people of data breaches.
A data breach is unauthorised access or disclosure, or loss of, personal information.
Senator Bernardi questioned whether the Information Commissioner was sufficiently resourced to cope, reminding the upper house that Attorney-General George Brandis had previously sought to abolish the office.
The commissioner was operating with "scarce or scant or non-existent" resources, he's been told.
The wording of the legislation was too broad, the senator said.
"We risk having that proverbial lawyers' picnic where they will queue up to advise businesses large and small what could be a serious breach," he told parliament.
"Anyone with a mailing list could potentially fall foul of this."
Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Penny Wong slammed the government for taking four years to bring on legislation with bipartisan support.
Labor had proposed the changes in 2013 but the bill lapsed at the federal election later that year.
Corporations or public service departments should not be allowed to delay reporting of a serious breach of a person's information out of fear of damage to their own reputation.
"As it stands, an individual's personal data can be breached by a government agency, a bank or an online store and there is no requirement the individual be notified so they can change their password or take other measures to protect themselves," she said.
"The person might be told tomorrow that their data was hacked four years ago.
"Australians are entitled to know so they can act to protect themselves."
Senator Wong said the new laws were especially important given the government had previously flagged privatising the Medicare payments system, and had contracted Telstra Health to run Australia's new cancer screening register.
"When personal health data is being handed over to a large corporate entity which has demonstrably a patchy privacy record, the passage of this bill is more important than ever."
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