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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3278 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

that proposal the only people who will be making use of the cameras - except, of course, for courts once material has been videotaped - are the police and given that the police are already fully subject to the provisions of the Commonwealth Privacy Act, then it is nonsense to suggest that the ACT requires further, separate privacy legislation which would cover what could be a relatively short trial of these cameras in Civic for a period of perhaps four or five months.

Members have complained repeatedly about the enormous pressure on drafting time in this place. Members have complained to me about not having resources available. Mr Osborne will know what I am talking about - the enormous pressure on getting drafting resources available to do important things. It is, then, quite extraordinary to see an Assembly committee come forward and tell me to draft a piece of legislation which, to all intents and purposes, the ACT already has. The Commonwealth privacy legislation has provisions which, as far as I can tell, are completely comprehensive when it comes to considering the operation of those cameras, if we take it that the cameras will operate only in respect of Civic and be operated only by police officers.

The privacy legislation already in place in the ACT covers the use of material from those cameras. That might not be so if the cameras were to be operated by, say, a private security firm such as Wormald or Chubb. In that case I could see an argument for separate privacy legislation. But that was not the Government's proposal. The proposal ought to have been allowed to proceed using the offer we had of cameras from a particular company and using the services of the Australian Federal Police to find out whether the effort and work involved in having a permanent use of those cameras in this way would be required. Members have obviously worked on the assumption that the legislation is necessary for the cameras to be covered by privacy legislation. That assumption is false. It is not required for that purpose.

The other recommendation, recommendation 4, states:

The Committee recommends that the Government, before commencing any trial of CCTV, establish an independent auditor/ombudsman with powers to audit the system, both random and specified periodic audits, and investigate complaints.

Once again, the ACT already has such a provision in place. The ACT has an ombudsman. The Commonwealth Ombudsman provides services to the ACT. The Ombudsman would be able to audit the system, given that it is a tool being used by ACT officers, namely, Australian Federal Police officers. I cannot conceive of any additional power which a special camera ombudsman would have but the present Ombudsman does not have in relation to the trial as proposed by the ACT Government. I look forward to someone in this debate enlightening me as to what those additional powers might be.

The Government, quite justifiably, in my view, baulked at the suggestion that we should spend what I am advised would be in excess of $100,000 establishing superfluous privacy legislation and a superfluous independent auditor/ombudsman to oversee a trial of maybe a few months, when it already had those devices in place and they are tried and tested.

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