Page 2396 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (10.50), in reply: I am pleased that there has been bipartisan support for this legislation, because it does embody a very important social justice principle - the essential, fundamental right to privacy. Mr Humphries, in his remarks, opened by citing some comments of Justice Douglas of the US Supreme Court, who was one of the great liberal, progressive judges of that court and for many years took a strong and robust view of the need to protect the individual's privacy.
It is a theme that Australian political and social leaders have addressed. It is now more than 20 years since Zelman Cowen gave one of the early Boyer lectures entitled "The Private Man", in which he was predicting, back in 1969, the increasing encroachment of technology on the right of individuals to have their fundamental privacy protected. In the time since the making of that speech, which sparked a fair bit of interest and debate in Australian political circles about privacy issues, we have seen technology advance to the point where you can now go down to your friendly, local neighbourhood electronics store and purchase for a very modest sum equipment that allows you to eavesdrop and pick up private conversations in a manner that would have been unimaginable only some 20 years ago.
The concern that Mr Humphries referred to about the fact that this does not regulate the police is quite right; but, as he noted, and as Ms Ellis expanded upon, the police use of listening devices is governed by quite specific Commonwealth legislation and it requires the obtaining by police of a warrant. That is as it should be, because the covert use of listening devices by law enforcement authorities can sometimes be important. A number of major narcotics and major money-laundering-type crimes have come to light as a result of such use; but it needs to be tightly controlled, and it is tightly controlled in Australia by way of the requirement that the police go and get a judicial warrant. Should we ever either have to or desire to move to a stand-alone ACT police force, I am sure that, in the legislation that would be necessary to set up such a force, this Assembly, whoever was in government at the time, would insist that similar protections be provided so that any ACT police force would need to go, say, to the Supreme Court to obtain a warrant.
While there is provision in the Bill for the Minister to grant exemptions, it is a requirement that they be done in such a way that they come before this Assembly and be tabled. So any suggestion that an ACT government could be authorising covert use of listening devices for purposes of its own can be refuted by demonstrating that any use of listening devices that is provided for by a Minister will be made public and will be brought before this Assembly. If at any stage I, or a successor, were minded to grant an exemption, I would be answerable to this Assembly for the exemption so granted, and it would be done in such a way that it would be very public.
Madam Speaker, Mr Humphries raised some concerns about penalty levels and, in particular, the clause 7 penalty which is for the mere possession of a conversation. He pointed out correctly that the same penalty provisions apply to that as to other offences. That is precisely the structure that has been used in New South Wales. Under the New South Wales Act of 1984, possession is an offence which is treated the same as other offences. The Government would not be minded to support a provision to change the penalty levels, but Independent members will take their own view of that. It is another one of these questions
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