2017-10-19
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) (11:18:15) — I am happy to speak today on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Body-worn Cameras and Other Matters) Bill 2017, which is the first — some other legislation will follow — piece of legislation to support the use of body-worn cameras when the devices are rolled out to frontline police next year. The aim is for police to use body-worn cameras in their daily duties eventually. The bill also introduces reforms which aim to ensure that crucial information is provided to the sex offender registry as soon as possible.
Currently the use of body-worn camera footage could constitute an offence if police were to inadvertently record a private conversation. This bill amends the Surveillance Devices Act 1999 to create an exception that will enable police to use the devices lawfully and ensure the footage is appropriately protected. This bill will be followed by a subsequent bill to support the use of body-worn cameras for recording statements in family violence matters and allow statements to be used by victims as their evidence-in-chief. This will implement recommendation 58 of the Royal Commission into Family Violence. The intention is to roll out body-worn cameras to all frontline police, and the footage captured by these devices will be used to support prosecutions, as evidence in police disciplinary matters and for police training.
Body-worn camera footage will also be available to assist IBAC in investigating allegations of police misconduct. The bill ensures that body-worn camera footage will fall within the broad scope of documents that IBAC can compel production of as part of an investigation and provides for the same protections and restrictions to apply to the overt use of tablet computers as will apply to body-worn cameras. Field testing of the cameras is expected to commence in the first half of next year, and the use of these cameras will bring Victoria into line with other states, including New South Wales and Queensland, where the equipment is already in use. It has been in use in the United Kingdom for many years and also in the United States.
The Greens are broadly supportive of this initiative and this bill, but we do have some concerns in particular in regard to the practicalities of the use of body-worn cameras and tablets around the definition of overt use. My office staff and I have had some conversations with the minister's staff with regard to the definition of the word 'overt'. We were advised that the definition is 'not hidden or secret'. We do not believe that is strong enough. If a body-worn camera or a tablet device is to be used to record a conversation or an interaction with a member of the public, either as an audio or visual recording, the person or persons that the police are interacting with should be proactively informed that the camera or tablet device will be used rather than simply assuming, because the body-worn camera is on the person of the police officer or the tablet is being held by the police officer, that a member of the public will necessarily assume that that device is being used.
This is particularly the case with body-worn cameras, because as members would realise, police do have quite a lot of paraphernalia about their person, including walkie-talkies, radios and all sorts of equipment. If you see police walking around, there is a lot of equipment that they carry with them. A body-worn camera would just be another one of those pieces of equipment on their person, and its presence will not necessarily alert the person or persons the police are interacting with that it is actually being used.
Under the similar New South Wales legislation police are required to actively inform people that the device is going to be used and the interaction will be recorded unless — this is the exception — it is impractical to do so. We think the legislation before us could be improved, and certainly the further legislation that will follow should have similar wording put in place. We are advised that police will develop guidelines, for example, as to the use of the devices, and that is well and good, but it is not as strong as embedding in the legislation what the requirements are.
We certainly do not want to see police officers using too much discretion with regard to when devices are and are not switched on. In New South Wales the default position is that they are used during interactions with members of the public and that those members of the public are informed unless it is impractical to do so. I know people would be aware of the event in Minneapolis, for example, where an Australian woman was tragically shot by a police officer who, despite being required to have his device turned on, did not do so. Minneapolis police policy states that devices should be turned on 'as soon as possible' but before any citizen contact and prior to any use of force, or if a body camera is not activated before then, 'it shall be activated as soon as it is safe to do so'. In that instance it was not.
We do want to guard against ad hoc usage of these devices. If they are going to be used, they need to be used consistently, and members of the public need to know they are being used. Having said that, we are supportive of the initiative that this bill puts into place and the changes to the Surveillance Devices Act as well.
Part 3 of the bill makes some amendments to the Judicial Proceedings Reports Act 1958, which restricts the publication of certain information, including details likely to lead to the identification of a victim of a sexual assault. Clause 8 of the bill amends the act to provide that the prohibition on disclosing information does not prevent the disclosure of information to a prescribed person or body for the purpose of enabling the person or body to perform a statutory function to ensure that there is no delay in fulfilling the requirements under the Sex Offenders Registration Act 2004 whereby the Chief Commissioner of Police must maintain a sex offenders register and requires the court to provide details of the sentence or determination of an appeal relating to a sex offender whose details are required to be maintained on the register.
With regard to the amendments that have been circulated, the government has circulated some amendments, the first set following an issue raised by the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) in its report on the bill. SARC posed a question around the wording in the bill, especially under clause 7, which makes it look like recordings from body-worn cameras or tablet computers that capture public events — that is, not private recordings — cannot be used for prosecutions or internal disciplinary matters. Whilst the Attorney-General in his response to SARC assured them that it is intended that all information captured could be used for prosecutions, the amendments make this clearer.
The second set of amendments relate to extending the use of body-worn cameras to ambulance officers due to the occupational violence that they deal with. Ambulance officers already have in place a policy to deal with body-worn cameras.
We are supportive of those amendments from the government.
The opposition have circulated a set of amendments to extend the use of body-worn cameras and devices to custodial officers and emergency workers, including Metropolitan Fire Brigade and Country Fire Authority workers, Victoria State Emergency Service workers and even some sets of volunteer workers. In terms of custodial offices — and I will certainly follow this up with the minister in committee — I presume that police custody officers are covered by this particular bill, as in they are members of the police force. Custodial officers are something certainly worth considering, and an argument can be made for that, but some of the other groups of workers that are included in the opposition's amendments I am not quite so convinced of.
The government has advised that the bill allows for other prescribed persons to be added to this regime in future, so that would allow some of the groups of workers put forward by the opposition to perhaps be added at a later date. I will certainly be interested to hear what the government has to say with regard to these amendments in the committee stage. I am inclined to not support the amendments put forward by the opposition at this stage, but I do feel that in terms of custodial offices there is certainly a case to be made for that class of public service worker. We do have some concerns about the practical application of these new provisions, but in general we do support the bill.