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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3364 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

These cameras can be very intrusive. We had a very good demonstration in Brisbane. You could focus the camera inside a shop 200 metres away. When you looked at it the shop was dark and you could not see in it with the naked eye. But this camera was able to penetrate inside that shop. You could identify the four or five people who were in there and what they were doing. That is hardly a public place; yet the cameras had the capacity to do this. So I think there is this fundamental question of privacy and that people are entitled to go about their lives without being observed. This argument that if you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide and you should not mind is spurious. I think there are some major issues there, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the report deals with them.

The report concludes that there should be a trial. I support that recommendation because it may well produce some of the answers to the questions that came to us on the inquiry. Answers were not available. What was the incidence of crime before these cameras went in? What was the incidence of crime later? Has there been an improvement that can be demonstrated? If you set up proper control arrangements, I am sure that that can be done. There is the question of making sure before it all starts you have an accepted protocol that determines who gets to see these videos and what can be done with the tapes and the like. A trial will answer, perhaps, some of the questions about whether people's lives are being unduly intruded upon by having these cameras in public places observing what people do, regardless of whether they are engaging in any illegal activity or not.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I commend the report to the Government. I think there is much in it that needs thought. I do support it. I would look forward with interest to the results of this trial, provided that the prerequisite conditions that the committee has recommended are set in place first.

MS FOLLETT (12.37): It is very pleasing to me to be speaking on this report, especially as it is a unanimous report of all members of the committee. I am sure members are aware that at the start of our inquiry all three members of the Legal Affairs Committee had rather different views about surveillance cameras. I think it is a tribute to the genuine spirit of exploration on this issue that we have come up with a report which reflects all of our concerns and which reaches unanimous recommendations for the Government.

At the beginning of our inquiry, Madam Deputy Speaker, my concerns about the use of surveillance cameras in public places really fell under three headings. They were, first of all, the privacy aspects, and my view that people were entitled to go about their daily lives, particularly in public places, without being under surveillance; secondly, the efficacy of the cameras themselves, and whether they served any useful purpose in the prevention of crime and the promotion of community safety; and, perhaps as a concomitant issue, the question of displacement of crime, and whether, even if you did prevent crime in one area, you were simply forcing it to another area.

On the question of privacy, Madam Deputy Speaker, we received extremely revealing evidence. The most revealing evidence, I believe, was that which we obtained on our visit to Queensland. Mr Osborne, the committee chair, has spoken about many aspects of our information-gathering during our Queensland visit. I do not want to go over old ground,

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