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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3277 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

The other thing that I think we need to remember is that over 1,300 people signed the petition. That is how many people in that area are concerned. Do these people not have a say? Do they not deserve to be listened to? You wonder about the consultation processes that this Government concerns itself with. Maybe these people we are talking about are not exciting, and they are not a multinational company; but they are people who live and work and spend in the ACT, and they deserve to be listened to.

I am extremely pleased that the Planning and Environment Committee is prepared to take on the work of looking at the upgrading of the Curtin shopping centre. At least there is one part of the government process that is listening to the people in that area. I congratulate them and I look forward to their report.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Debate resumed from 25 September 1996, on motion by Mr Osborne:

That the report be noted.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (11.21): Mr Speaker, I have already tabled the Government's response to this report of the Legal Affairs Committee. I have to emphasise again the concern the Government has about a couple of elements of the report. I emphasise that the Government is prepared to work within the framework set by the committee. Most of the elements are entirely reasonable, and the Government expects to be able to deliver on those elements, if it has not already, in the near future, if the use of closed-circuit television cameras is to proceed.

There are two matters which I have to say again the Government most emphatically believes are unnecessary at this point. These two matters were subject to a motion in the Assembly on the last occasion this matter was before the house. The first relates to recommendation 3. Recommendation 3 says:

The Committee recommends that the Government enact Privacy legislation incorporating penalties for breaches which will cover video surveillance before commencing any trial of CCTV systems in public places in the ACT.

That recommendation would be understandable if it were the proposal of the Government to trial surveillance cameras using a system which involved non-ACT public servants, indeed involving people other than Australian Federal Police; but that is not the case.

The Government's proposal was - I use the past tense because I am not sure that I can say any longer that the Government has a proposal to trial CCTV cameras - to have the Australian Federal Police act as the monitors of the cameras and to use them as a tool in assessing the effectiveness of cameras in the ACT, particularly in Civic. Given that under

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