The South Australian government's privacy watchdog has concluded it is "probable" the government did not facilitate unauthorised collection of personal data from people who clicked on dozens of party-political links found on official government websites.
The links, across official sites including the Department of the Premier and Cabinet and COVID-19 pages, were deleted soon after they were revealed by an ABC News investigation in late March.
The links referenced stateliberalleader.nationbuilder.com, a campaign tool used by the Liberal Party to distribute campaign material.
The party has used the tool to prepare profiles on voters, and "tag" them as having interest in certain issues.
Premier Steven Marshall has previously said the links were inadvertently copied onto the website from press releases created in the NationBuilder system.
Both NationBuilder and Mr Marshall have denied that any data was collected.
No unauthorised collection 'probable'
The state's Privacy Committee reviewed the matter to investigate whether the government may have breached its own Information Privacy Principles.
"NationBuilder and agencies indicated that they have not collected any personal information from the website redirections," the committee's presiding member, Simon Froude, wrote in a report tabled in state parliament today.
Mr Froude said, based on the information provided to the committee by chief executives of government departments, there "did not appear" to be a breach of the privacy principles.
"The committee noted that the media coverage generated through this matter and the inquiry by the committee will have had a positive outcome of raising awareness amongst agencies of the risk to the privacy of personal information by such action," he said.
The report said no formal complaints had been received, but that the state ombudsman "may wish to enquire further into the use of NationBuilder within a government agency and the practice of agencies cutting and pasting URL links".
In a statement, Ombudsman Wayne Lines said he was "considering the report and determining whether … to undertake further enquiries."
He previously said the use of the political NationBuilder platform in government offices raised questions that needed to be answered, and did not rule out a formal investigation.
Ombudsman to consider report
Attorney-General Vickie Chapman told parliament the Privacy Committee's review backed the Premier's statements.
"Despite the hysterical claims of the opposition as this being the biggest scandal in South Australia's history, the Privacy Committee has confirmed what the Premier has said from the outset: we never did it," she said.
Mr Marshall said Labor had "egg all over their face at the moment".
"In fact, they went further to say that… there'd been no breach whatsoever and they weren't looking at it in any detail going forward."
Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas said the state government had "handpicked" the Privacy Committee to review itself.
"I think it's a bit cheeky for the state government to say we've reviewed ourselves, and we've told ourselves that we've done a good job," he said.
"What we need here is what we've always argued for, which is a genuinely independent review."
The Privacy Committee is made up of a mixture of public servants and non-government members.
