Page 214 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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of the bill. Indeed, many of the practical issues I have outlined today are concerns that have been echoed in the business community. And there are others.
The scrutiny committee also saw flaws in this bill. I quote its summary in report No 32:
The scheme proposed is very complex … the Explanatory Statement falls short by a long way in explaining the nature of its provisions.
The committee then went to the somewhat unusual length of giving a narration of how it saw the bill operating—or not operating, as the case may be. Fully 6½ pages were devoted to this.
Since then there has been a four-page response by Ms Bresnan, but much of what she says in that sheds little light on the matters raised, merely serving to muddy the waters even more.
As a member of the scrutiny of bills committee, I think it is important to note that the scrutiny of bills committee thought very seriously about the way that we should approach this matter, on the basis that this was a piece of legislation from a private member who does not have the same backup and support that a minister does from a government department. The scrutiny of bills committee took the advice of its advisers and was very fulsome in the comments that it made—more so than would be the case for a government bill.
The construction of this bill, together with the comments of the scrutiny committee and Ms Bresnan’s response, demonstrate that the Greens have not thought through all the implications to the end. Perhaps it would have been better if we had seen some form of regulatory impact statement, but no such statement was released with this bill. It shows that the Greens have little regard to the ACT business community or the contribution it makes to the economic growth of the territory.
We note one sensible element of this bill, and that is the review clause, clause 48, which requires the minister to review the operation of the bill after its first year of operation and to report to the Assembly within three months of the review starting. We, too, will be monitoring the operation of this bill as it plays out in the ACT community over the first 12 months of its operation.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (4.57): I am pleased to be debating the Workplace Privacy Bill which represents an important step in extending privacy rights to workers, while providing employers a useful legal framework for conducting legitimate surveillance in the workplace. Regulation of privacy in the workplace is a necessity in an environment where surveillance technologies become more sophisticated and pervasive. However, a balance needs to be struck between the right to privacy in a workplace and the legitimate use of surveillance technology for security, health and safety and monitoring of staff. We believe that this bill strikes the balance between these two competing needs.
This bill operates on the basic principle of privacy that workers should have the following rights: the right to know that they are under surveillance, the right to know
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