Wednesday, 4 February 2026

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (10:10): It is indeed a joy to contribute to today’s committee reports discussion. My contribution will be based in large part on the report on the 2025–26 budget estimates, specifically chapter 4 relating to the Department of Education and item 4.1, which is the overview part, which says that one of the objectives of the Department of Education is in fact to provide equitable and inclusive schooling to all Victorian students. That is an eminently sensible pursuit of the Department of Education; it is the right pursuit for the Department of Education. But it came to my attention over the summer that there has been now exposed quite a significant hindrance to that aspiration being achieved. I refer specifically to the private information of students past and present within our state system being leaked, being accessed by people who should not access it, exposing the Department of Education’s systems to third-party actors, perhaps foreign actors – people who wish to do our students harm, people who wish to do our state’s reputation harm, and people who seek to potentially interfere in our democratic values and democratic processes. The great tragedy of this is that it has happened on this government’s watch.

I do note that the Minister for Education Minister Carroll, the Deputy Premier, did make comments on 15 January to a number of news outlets – 7News, the Age and the Herald Sun – all largely consistent comments. The minister said, and I am happy to provide this to Hansard for their information as well:

“The safety, privacy and security of students, staff and families remains our absolute priority …

Parents and students have been provided with information and guidance on how schools are managing the situation ahead of the return to school.”

All of that may be true. All of that might be the right thing to do, and I do not disagree that it is the right thing to do. But we have not heard from the minister since. We have not heard from the minister what the scope of this data breach has been, which students have been affected, whether they are past students or present students, or what information has been accessed. So, yes, I am aware that general communications from the Department of Education have gone out and have been disseminated amongst Victorian government schools, as is the right approach. But since that happened, and since the minister made this statement on 15 January, there have been no further communications that I am aware of to past or present students that have been impacted to identify for them what information has been hacked and what they should do about that, and that is an absolute and utter disgrace.

I felt so strongly about this that I wrote to the Victorian information commissioner asking them to investigate the circumstances leading to the breach, the nature of the information stolen, when the breach occurred, when the Department of Education found out about the breach, whether the data protection policies and practices of the Department of Education are adequate, whether or not the post-incident disclosure actions of the department represent best practice and, finally, the involvement of the Minister for Education’s office, including notification and management of the data breach. I am pleased to inform the house that the Victorian information commissioner wrote to me later that week saying that he accepted the principles outlined in my letter – the principle of undertaking an investigation – and in fact the Victorian information commissioner would undertake an investigation into this serious data breach.

I am confident that the Victorian information commissioner, as an independent officer of this Parliament, will do the right thing – will investigate this matter thoroughly. We will provide recommendations. What I am seeking from the government is an assurance that they will take the recommendations provided by the Victorian information commissioner seriously, and that they will act upon those recommendations seriously. It is unacceptable that Victorian students’ information has been leaked in this way and exposed in this way. I make the correspondence I referred to in my contribution available to the house, and I encourage the Minister for Education and this government to do so much better.