The government has changed the rules so that the only Covid close contacts needing to isolate are people in the same household as someone infected.

Why then is the NSW Government persisting with QR codes everywhere we go, monitoring our movements?

If you visited the same shopping centre, cafe or gym as someone Covid positive there is no requirement to isolate. More than that, with so much Omicron around, the government has basically given up on contact tracing.

We have now moved to a system of self-assessment: if you have symptoms get a RAT test (which the governments should have stockpiled months ago, as I urged) and if positive, isolate till better.
QR coding has become redundant.

Yet the NSW Minister for data collection, Victor Dominello, is persisting as if the rules have not changed.

When challenged on radio this morning about the need for millions of people to QR check-in every day, this was his reason: “They are a reminder that if you have symptoms monitor them and that Covid is still around.”

How ridiculous. Everyone knows to do this and anyway, QR codes have nothing to do with having symptoms.

I worry about fanaticism in politics and while a nice fellow in other ways, Dominello is obsessed with private data collection.

Sticking with QR codes that have no public health purpose is part of a pattern.

His agency, Service NSW, has a bad record of data breaches, hacks and abuse. The Chinese Government in particular often tries to break into the system to cause trouble.

History tells us that collecting private information about a large number of people can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Privacy is still a basic human right.

The NSW QR codes should end.

Mark Latham MLC
5 January 2022.