Page 2854 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 October 2022
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instructions that Optus has issued them, including receiving a replacement licence and the credit of that cost to them from Optus. (Time expired.)
DR PATERSON: Minister, building on your previous answers in the chamber, can you provide further insight into why such a proportionally smaller number of ACT residents are affected and why we are focusing our rectification efforts on those people?
MS CHEYNE: ACT drivers licences are of course a commonly used form of primary identification document. A form of primary identification is required by organisations from which a line of credit is being sought—everything from a home loan to a post-paid mobile phone service. A number of the credentials that are relied on when providing an identity are issued by the ACT government, including drivers licences, and can be electronically verified through the national Document Verification Service.
ACT drivers licences contain many individual pieces of information, but, importantly, there are two unique number fields. These fields are the drivers licence number, which sits with your other information, and the drivers licence card number, which is vertical against your photograph and begins with an A. Since 1 September the ACT, along with a number of other jurisdictions, has required that for an identity to be verified both the drivers licence number and the licence card number fields must be provided correctly through the DVS, and they need to match, as I stated before. If you don’t provide both or if both don’t match, that verification will fail.
Having these two fields reduces the ability for the card to be fraudulently used, such as in the case of a third-party data issue. It also means that a replacement card is necessary, however, if both the drivers licence number and the card number have been compromised, which is the case for those customers who provided Optus with their drivers licence details after 1 September this year. It is also why replacing the licence card only, which will provide customers with a new drivers licence card number, is sufficient to remove the risk in the Optus breach for drivers licence information. That is that small proportion, as I flagged. As I also mentioned, anyone who wishes to have their licence replaced can.
MS ORR: Minister, where can Canberrans go to get further information, including information on the cost of replacing cards?
MS CHEYNE: As members are aware, we have put in place an arrangement to replace drivers licence cards for those Canberrans with both fields compromised. They are the priority, although again I will stress that anyone who wishes to have their card replaced can. Issuing a new drivers licence card means getting a new drivers licence card number. That means that the old number in the compromised information cannot be used through DVS. We have come to an agreement where Optus will cover the substantive fee for issuing a new drivers licence card, ensuring that Canberrans are not out of pocket. Access Canberra has been working hard to process those requests.
For those people who are looking for more information—and I understand that many Canberrans have already accessed the information that we have provided online—it is on the Access Canberra website. There is a dedicated FAQ page. It is detailed and it
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