Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Statements on parliamentary committee reports

Privileges Committee

Report on the Complaint by the Member for Polwarth

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (10:13): Today I rise to speak on a report from the Legislative Assembly Privileges Committee on the complaint by the member for Polwarth, which was tabled in this house yesterday. I speak on this report as a member of the Privileges Committee and a member of the House Committee, and it will become apparent fairly soon as to why that is also of interest. The reason I am really speaking on this report is that I want the house to read this report. Privileges Committee reports tend to have very anodyne titles, and this one is no different. However, this report goes into quite a lot of detail. We have made several findings and three recommendations which will affect every single member of Parliament if they are implemented. In summary we have found that:

The current electorate office CCTV access procedure does not provide sufficient safeguards to protect parliamentary privilege. It is the view of this Committee that procedures to allow third parties to access electronic security data held by the parliament must contemplate, as their starting point, the right of a member to assert privilege over such material, particularly when that material relates directly to the work of a member.

We also found that members of Victoria Police, particularly those that regularly interact with members of Parliament, may benefit from further instruction on the role of members of Parliament and core principles of parliamentary privilege.

I turn now to the recommendations. I will come back to recommendation 1, but recommendation 2 is:

That the Presiding Officers and Victoria Police review and agree to an updated Memorandum of Understanding … to accommodate changes in organisational structures, methods for service delivery, technology, and procedure, of Victoria Police and the Parliament of Victoria respectively, since the last MOU …

was signed in 2007. We also recommend:

That Victoria Police provide training on parliamentary privilege to Victoria Police members that regularly engage, or could reasonably be expected to engage, with members of parliament.

The main recommendation, though, that we make that affects the operation of this house and the House Committee is:

That the House Committee review the policy for access to electronic data to ensure that the privilege of the House is preserved, and that the policy includes:

a) a presumption that all electronic data related to the work of members may be subject to an assertion of privilege;

b) consequently, a general presumption that information or data should not be released to third parties without the authorisation of the relevant member …

We acknowledge that there may be circumstances where it is not appropriate for the member to be informed of such requests or to make a determination about the release of that material, and in those circumstances we recommend that there be:

a process … which allows the relevant Presiding Officer, as advised by the relevant Clerk, to make a determination about the release of material, having considered:

i. whether there is a prima facie case for an assertion of privilege to be upheld; and

ii. whether compelling circumstances exist that would override the presumption set out in b) above.

This goes to the issue of CCTV camera footage in our electorate offices, and the Privileges Committee has, through this report, recommended that that footage be only released to law enforcement bodies and anybody else once the member has agreed to that. Now, that is not the current process. That is not what happens at the moment. However, Privileges, having considered this, has come to the view that there may be, by default, circumstances where the member has the right to claim privilege over the CCTV footage taken in their electorate offices. We have recommended the House Committee look at this. As a member of the House Committee I recognise the House Committee now will not sit before the end of this term, but I recommend that this be taken up in the next term.