Page 377 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 17 February 2015
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assault. Canberra, unfortunately, is not immune from these practices. A case currently before the courts involves a man allegedly witnessed taking upskirt photos at the National Multicultural Festival a year ago. In 2012 a man was charged with an act of indecency without consent for allegedly taking photos of a 17-year-old girl under a changing room partition. He allegedly had on various devices over 100 other video clips of young girls.
It is worth remembering that this area of law is one where different human rights intersect and there is an obligation on the government to ensure they have appropriate laws to protect people’s privacy, to protect them from intrusive, voyeuristic behaviour. The European Court of Human Rights examined this issue in 2013 and held that Sweden had violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights; that is, the right to respect for private life. The case involved a 14-year-old girl whose stepfather had attempted to covertly film her when she was naked. The attempt to prosecute the man for an act of molestation failed, as it was too difficult to meet the elements of that offence. According to the European court, Sweden had breached its obligation because at the time it did not prohibit filming without someone’s consent and its legal framework was, therefore, not adequate to protect the girl from a violation of her personal integrity.
I think there are areas where it may be possible to extend laws to help protect women from this type of behaviour. One area I would suggest the government examine, for example, is an offence to target malicious distribution of images or videos which could initially have been taken with consent but have later been distributed for revenge purposes when a relationship breaks down.
Lastly on this matter, I note that the scrutiny committee has raised the idea of creating a series of greater offences, as New South Wales has done. However, I am attracted to the fact that the framing of the offences in this bill is able to provide scope for covering emerging technology, a feature that is lacking in the New South Wales approach.
I will speak briefly on firearms, because the bill contains several minor amendments to the Firearms Act related to the use of firearms at club shooting ranges. These should always be examined very closely. Australia and the ACT generally have very strict gun control laws, and the Greens are supportive of these. They arose through the national firearms agreement after the Port Arthur incident in 1996 and the national handgun control agreement after the Monash University shooting in 2002. They put in place a broadly uniform regime for the regulation and licensing of firearms. The balance they seek is to enhance community safety while preserving the privileges of responsible firearms owners.
Firearms licences and sports shooting are highly regulated. The ACT Firearms Act is some 250 pages long. I would be concerned if there were changes to the firearms regime which I felt were relaxing the requirements and restrictions on obtaining firearms, particularly handguns. While I know there are many dedicated sporting shooters who greatly enjoy their sport and who are very responsible, there is an unfortunate reality that guns are a terrible danger to the community. In the past, gun licences were an avenue by which people had obtained guns to commit crimes. The
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