Page 2440 - Week 08 - Thursday, 6 August 2015
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Overall, this bill makes a number of amendments to the road transport legislation. The changes are consistent with government policy to reduce the number of deaths and life-changing accidents on our roads. While the vast majority of Canberrans do the right thing, there does remain a small minority of road users who behave dangerously and threaten the safety of themselves and others. These changes will assist enforcement efforts and continue the government’s ongoing efforts to increase road safety for all Canberrans. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail stage
Clauses 1 to 11, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Proposed new clause 11A.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Justice, Minister for Sport and Recreation and Minister assisting the Chief Minister on Transport Reform) (12.19), by leave: I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name and a supplementary explanatory statement [see schedule 1 at page 2485].
As Mr Hanson foreshadowed in his remarks, I am proposing an amendment to the Road Transport (General) Act 1999 to insert a new provision preventing the Road Transport Authority from being compelled by any preliminary discovery process to disclose information about registrable vehicles and registered operators of registrable vehicles if the purpose of the preliminary discovery process is to recover private car park fees. I am moving this amendment urgently and seeking the Assembly’s agreement because the ACT government is aware of a private car park operator seeking to use the preliminary discovery process to obtain the names and addresses of a large number of operators of ACT registered vehicles, essentially Canberra drivers. I am therefore seeking at the earliest possible opportunity to update the law and prevent the use of preliminary discovery for this purpose.
Given that the road transport legislation bill is currently before the Assembly, this is an opportunity to respond to this issue immediately to protect the personal information of a large number of ACT residents. It is important that the government makes this amendment to ensure the protection of personal information provided by members of the community to the government for vehicle registration and related purposes under the road transport legislation. There is a real and legitimate expectation by the community that government will protect such information and ensure that it is not disclosed to and exploited by commercial entities.
The amendment also aims to discourage car park operators from adopting business models that rely upon the large-scale disclosure of personal information held by government. Road transport authorities across Australia are agencies with extremely
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