Page 760 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2018
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the Assembly, debated, passed and brought into legislation—a fairly extensive process that also involved considerable community consultation and amendments. Yet, before many of these provisions have actually been enacted, we are now essentially repealing them.
The question that I am very keen to have explained is: does this highlight inadequacy in the consultation process? Is it evidence of poor governance on behalf of the current minister? Is it an illustration of poor governance on behalf of the previous minister or is it, as I wholly suspect, a matter of the government’s agenda being run externally by UnionsACT?
My understanding is that the initial legislation came about after a review of the Workplace Privacy Act 2011 which was undertaken with the explicit purpose of identifying any need for legislative changes to improve the operation of the act. The act recognises the needs of an employer to reasonably and lawfully monitor their workplace, which in some cases is their own business. The changes made at the time took into account the potential need for employers to undertake surveillance outside the workplace. The minster at the time, Mr Rattenbury at that point, said:
This amendment reflects the review’s finding that without a means to allow covert surveillance outside the workplace an employer’s ability to defend legal proceedings against them may be adversely affected.
Nothing in the uncommenced sections of the original bill being amended in clause 5 of the bill that is before us today is alarming to me, and clearly it was not too alarming to the majority of members in this place who passed the legislation in 2016 or the vast majority of stakeholders who were consulted in 2016—other than one strident opponent to those clauses and elements of the legislation, being UnionsACT.
This can also be confirmed through Mr Rattenbury’s words in this place on 7 April 2016. Again I quote the then minister, who said:
I note that not all stakeholders agree with the proposal to allow limited covert surveillance outside the workplace. Unions ACT does not agree and yesterday made media comments about the proposal. In my view, those comments were unfortunately quite misleading. They do not give an accurate account of the way that this will work in practice, the extensive safeguards in the bill or the involvement of the human rights commissioner in making sure the bill was of the highest standard in terms of its interaction with human rights.
For the benefit of the Assembly, let me provide some more detail about how this surveillance could occur outside the workplace. The amendment acknowledges that there are some circumstances where an employee engages in behaviour connected to their workplace that is unlawful and that an employer is justified in conducting surveillance on the employee. These circumstances would be very limited and must meet the strict requirements set out in the bill.
Those were the words of the then minister, Mr Rattenbury, in 2016. It does seem that one vocal stakeholder has got their way—that is, UnionsACT, who can rightfully claim a victory here, but at what cost? Is this not just another example of undue
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