The Labor government has announced new laws that will allow telcos to share “limited information about customers” with government agencies in order to thwart fraud.

The changes to the telecommunications regulations will also allow Australian telecommunications companies to “better communicate with financial institutions to detect and mitigate the risks of malicious activity, including ID theft and scams,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland (pictured below) told press this morning.

This will also allow Optus to share “limited information about customers” with government agencies, in a wake of the data breach.

“What this is all about is to try and reduce the impact of this data breach on Optus customers and to enable financial institutions to implement enhanced safeguards and monitoring,” Rowland said, adding the Labor government had “consulted widely” before making the changes.

“We have designed these regulations with strong privacy and security safeguards to ensure that only limited information is made available for a specific set of designated purposes,” Rowland said.

Jim Chalmers added that safety was key when drafting the changed.

“Only limited information can be made available temporarily to prevent and respond to cyber security incidents, fraud, scams and related activities,” the Treasurer told press.

Chalmers confirmed that names, addresses, dates of birth or other personal information would not be among the information shared. Information shared may include licence, Medicare, and passport numbers of affected customers.