Page 4393 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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Proposed new clause 16A agreed to.
At 6 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
Clauses 17 to 26, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Clause 27.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (6.00): I move amendment No 2 circulated in my name [see schedule 3 at page 4412]. This amendment replaces clause 27 of the bill and inserts new sections 29 to 29C, which provide that point-to-point camera images should be afforded a comparable level of privacy protection to that given to personal information within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1988.
In proposing these amendments, I want to make it clear that the government does not consider that the original clause 27 was in any way defective. The Government Solicitor’s office advised that the proposed sections in that clause were consistent with human rights, and the scrutiny committee raised no objections to these clauses. Nevertheless, I am proposing this amendment in order to provide greater clarity about the range of purposes for which images may be used and disclosed and how they must be safeguarded against misuse.
The government does not believe it would be appropriate to give images of number plates on vehicles driven on a public road a substantially higher level of privacy protection than applies to private information under the information privacy principles in the Privacy Act 1988. Doing so would be inconsistent with its broader policies on privacy protection and information security.
The supplementary explanatory statement explains at some length how new sections 29 and 29A will apply a standard of protection in relation to the use and disclosure of images that is as high, and in some respects even higher, than the level of protection available for personal information under information privacy principles 10 and 11.
New section 29 deals with the purposes for which images may be used by the Road Transport Authority. In brief, the authority may use images for the purposes of the road transport legislation. This is the primary purpose for which images are taken. Secondly, the Road Transport Authority may use images where necessary for the enforcement of the criminal law or a law imposing a pecuniary penalty. This type of secondary purpose has long been recognised as legitimate and is included in the information privacy principles, although the formulation used in IPP 10 covers a wider range of law enforcement purposes, in that it extends to protection of public revenue.
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