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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 507 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

I believe that this issue is one where the Assembly needs to have a great deal more information than we have so far had from Mr Humphries. I was quite surprised to hear from the media that Mr Humphries was planning to put these surveillance cameras in very soon. I did not know that. I am sure that the community did not know that.

Mr Humphries: I told them this morning.

MS FOLLETT: I believe that Mr Humphries made that statement on the media this morning. Where was the Assembly's input to that? Where was the community's input? I do not think a step of this magnitude ought to be taken without very full and very careful consideration. I remind Mr Humphries that we are a parliament. We have a right to be involved in those decisions, and the community has a right to be consulted, to be involved in decisions that affect them. As I said, this decision to put surveillance into the general areas of our town centre has the potential to affect the privacy of just about every Canberran, to affect the privacy of the hundreds of thousands of people who are going about their quite lawful private lives and who just happen to be doing it in Civic. I do not believe that that is acceptable.

My concerns about the surveillance cameras could be summarised as, first of all, that I do not know whether they are going to work. We know that police presence in Civic, on all the evidence we have, does work. I would hate to think we might somehow be bringing about some kind of fool's paradise where we rely on a piece of mechanical equipment to do a job that ought to be done by properly paid and properly trained officers of our police force. Another issue I have alluded to concerns whether the problem is just going to be shifted elsewhere, away from the area where the cameras are.

I would also like to think the Government has at least some nodding - I do not know; I would like to say honesty but I will not say that - or passing interest in fulfilling their promise of open and consultative government. This is a major issue, and it worries me that it is being put forward by representatives of a Government whose actions in relation to civil liberties have not convinced me that they are really up to speed on citizens' right to go about their business in an unfettered way. For instance, we have seen from this Government previously the move-on powers legislation. I and my party believed that the move-on powers represented a quite discriminatory invasion of civil liberties. I believe that that view was echoed by the community. We have seen other attempts by Liberals to inflict on the community things like the obligation to present their name and address to police on request, and all sorts of other efforts to impose restrictions on civil liberties that I believe were quite unwarranted.

I do not believe that it is appropriate for the ACT community to be subjected to this kind of surveillance, and I do not think they would believe that it was appropriate, either, had they ever been asked. The motion I am putting forward today is designed to stay the Government's hand for six months, and in that period I would like to see the Legal Affairs Committee, or any committee of the Assembly, hold the consultative and open process the Government should have done by now. I believe that people with an interest in this matter have a right to put their views forward. I certainly have not heard their views so far. It may be that all of the concerns I have raised are groundless, but I know

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