Page 4310 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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the Security Industry Act 2003 build on previous amendments passed in this Assembly on 7 December 2010 incorporating uniform licensable activities and training requirements into the Security Industry Act 2003.
Previous amendments enacted provisions for the three new licensing categories requiring particular skills: guarding with a dog, guarding with a firearm, and licensing for monitoring centre operators. They also provided for a temporary visitor licence scheme to facilitate interstate mobility of security industry workers, thereby improving the industry’s capacity to provide services across jurisdictions; for example, for larger events.
This round of reforms is focused primarily on ensuring and maintaining the integrity of the security industry workforce. In response to comments made by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety performing the duties of a scrutiny of bills and subordinate legislation committee, I take the opportunity to table a revised explanatory statement for this bill. The revised explanatory statement in particular addresses more fully the human rights issues associated with this bill.
The first significant change is that the bill authorises the disclosure of criminal intelligence information to the Commissioner for Fair Trading. The use of criminal intelligence and the restricted access to this information potentially raise issues of procedural fairness and engage the right to privacy under the Human Rights Act 2004. To ensure that such information is used appropriately, the bill specifically incorporates protections for the use and disclosure of criminal intelligence for the purpose of deciding a person’s eligibility for a security licence.
The bill clearly defines the circumstances in which that information may be provided. The Chief Police Officer must only release such information to the commissioner where he or she believes on reasonable grounds that the information is relevant to the making of a decision by the commissioner about whether to issue a licence to the applicant or whether to apply to the ACAT for an occupational discipline order in relation to the licensee.
Where an applicant is refused a licence on the basis of criminal intelligence and the applicant seeks a review of the decision, or where the commissioner seeks occupational discipline based on criminal intelligence, proposed part 2A provides that the commissioner or the Chief Police Officer must apply to the ACAT for a determination about whether the information is criminal intelligence.
Protection is afforded by the provision that enables assessment of the nature of the information provided as criminal intelligence by an independent judicial body. Criminal intelligence is narrowly defined as information relating to actual or suspected criminal activity the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to prejudice a criminal investigation or enable the discovery of a confidential source of information relevant to law enforcement, or endanger anyone’s life or physical safety.
The final element of the protections for use of criminal intelligence is that where the ACAT decides information is not criminal intelligence the information must either be disclosed to the applicant or withdrawn, meaning it cannot be used as part of the decision-making process.
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