The state of legislation post-election in the privacy and data protection space is a tale of legislation proceeding at vastly different speeds.

The encryption legislation passed in great haste late in 2018 has been the subject of ongoing and significant criticism and had been promised to be amended by Labor if it came into power.

It looks as if that may now be deferred, particularly if other legislation takes a higher priority such as that relating to taxes and improving housing affordability.

The Consumer Data Right legislation has by contrast moved incredibly slowly through the Parliament and is likely also to be deferred as there appears to be little appetite commercially to advance it. Since its referral in February on the second reading to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, and their report in late March, it has not advanced further. In addition, while the ACCC has published draft rules for it to operate in the open banking space, public comment on those rules only closed this month.

To the extent that the re-elected Coalition government considers there is a need for "evolution" rather than "revolution" in its policies then it is unlikely that we will see any further changes in the space in the near future.

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