Bills

Summary Offences (Drones) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (10:33): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Summary Offences Act 1953. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (10:34): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill arises out of some concerns I have had that technology is moving faster than we as legislators can possibly keep up. I am therefore seeking to make a minor amendment to the Summary Offences Act to address just one little part of that, and it comes about in this way.

As I say, technology has been moving very rapidly, and no doubt for the last century technology has been moving rapidly. I imagine that when the first car appeared on the road there were not any rules about keeping to the left or giving hand signals back in the day, and legislators had to gradually come to grips with what was going to happen as more and more people acquired cars. Then we introduced aeroplanes, and no doubt there had to be rules about that, but at the very first flight there would not have been any rules about it.

It does seem to me that technology is moving even faster these days; it is extraordinarily rapid. Indeed, I remember at high school attending at the University of New South Wales where I was involved in playing a game of chess against a computer, and they said to us that that was the last game that computer was ever going to lose at chess, but the computer took up a room about half the size of this chamber.

We are now at a point where I was with our new Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on a plane in recent months coming over from Port Lincoln and he was showing me his new Apple Watch, and the computer power in that Apple Watch far exceeded anything that was in that entire room; so, technology has been moving very rapidly, and it is impossible to stop it, it seems.

However, there are consequences arising from that increase in technology, and the one I am seeking to address in this particular bill is the use of drones. I have wandered out some days down to the river and watched people flying drones along the Torrens adjacent to here. That is not a problem from my point of view. I think that there can be problems but, as long as they are not in airspace and interfering with things, then that is not a problem. If they go into airspace, then there are rules already in place to deal with that.

The problem I seek to address is one that came to my attention when one of my parliamentary colleagues—and I will not name the person—mentioned that when he (and I use that in a grammatical sense; it could be he or she) was in Melbourne one Christmas people had a drone, they got it flying, they attached a mobile phone with a camera and flew it to their next-door neighbour's place and actually filmed into the windows of the next-door neighbour's place.

It is that specific activity which this bill seeks to address because people, I think, would be surprised to know that there is nothing to stop that happening at the moment. I think that there is an instinctive thinking that people feel they have a right to privacy and that right actually does not largely exist. At the moment our law basically says in terms of trespass that there is a licence to go up to someone's front door—except to my front door because I have a sign at the front that says, 'No media beyond this point.'

People generally have a right to approach your front door, knock on the front door and then leave. That is a licence that they have, but generally they are at ground level. The difficulty is that technology has suddenly jumped the fence with these little drones and people are able to fly a drone up to your window, for instance.

I must admit that I have a somewhat jaundiced view about what could happen given that, when I stood down from the leadership, I expressly said in my statement that I would be making no further comment, but by the time I got back from Port Pirie that day I found my house staked out, and it remained staked out for the next 48 hours. As it happens, I can get in and out of my house without the media seeing me because I have lived there a very long time and I have a wonderful neighbourhood. So, I was able to overcome the problem, but it is a significant problem.

It is not just the media I am seeking to protect people from: it is generally the problem that people can get a drone and fly it over someone's property at the moment. I am not trying to stop people from flying drones in public places and I am not trying to stop the use of drones for legitimate purposes. For instance, I know that pizza deliveries are already made in some places using drones. That may indeed be an excellent thing, because it might keep young drivers off the road who have jobs delivering pizzas. It might not be a good thing for the employment statistics, but it might be a much safer and better way to deliver pizzas.

I know that the Real Estate Institute and the real estate industry generally are very much in favour of the ability to use drones, but you may recall that a couple of weeks ago, the member for Schubert pointed out that in Melbourne already there has been a situation in the real estate industry where someone had a drone to film above a property that they were placing on the market, but they inadvertently filmed the lady next door who was sunbathing topless in her yard. That lady in her backyard sunbathing topless, I believe, has a reasonable expectation of privacy, but the problem is that we have been lax as a parliament. This government has had many years to think about it and has done nothing much to protect people's expectations of reasonable rights to privacy.

It is not just a matter of privacy; is also a matter of nuisance. Having practised law for as long as I did, I can tell you that lots of neighbourhood disputes can arise. The first thing you have to learn as a lawyer is about fencing, because so many disputes arise over fencing. You can imagine the sorts of disputes that are going to happen with people flying drones into each other's yards, and the events that could occur.

The idea behind this piece of legislation is simply to say that for 30 metres above your property you can expect that no-one is going to be allowed to fly a drone. If it is private property, then you have a right to expect that no drones will be able to be flown in. If you could catch it or slingshot it or whatever, if any of those things were legal, no doubt people would want to do it. It just seems to me that we have failed thus far to give people what they reasonably expect, and that is a right to protect their privacy and to protect them from unreasonable nuisance when it comes to drones.

The terms of the legislation are pretty straightforward. It just introduces a single change to the Summary Offences Act. I will just explain what that means. It says about the operation of unmanned aircraft—obviously, drones are unmanned aircraft—'A person must not operate an unmanned aircraft within 30 metres of private premises except with the permission of the occupier of the premises.' If your kids want to play with their drones in their backyards, fine. If someone else wants to play, if your kids' friends come over and they bring a drone, fine, but they cannot fly it over the next door neighbour's place.

It is a defence to a charge that the aircraft was at the time of the offence on or above the premises of which the defendant was the occupier. What I have tried to do is address the situation where the 30 metres—it may be a fairly blunt instrument—is much further than the distance between some houses and some subdivisions. Therefore, I have put in that provision so that if you are actually flying it above your own place, even though it is within 30 metres of someone else's place then that is not caught by the terms of the legislation that I am proposing.

The other provision in that is that the defendant did not, in operating the aircraft, intend to infringe a reasonable expectation of privacy. So if it is inadvertent, there is a defence to the charge. Basically I have said in this that the penalty is up to $2,500 or imprisonment for up to 6 months, which are just the standard terms—and these are obviously the maximums—for that sort of offence under the Summary Offences Act.

I point out that, in fact, a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, at law, theoretically you owned down as far as the centre of the earth and up into the skies heavenward. Obviously, as mining rights have come into play and as aircraft movements have come into play, those rights have been diminished, and, of course, ever since 1066, when William the Conqueror said, 'This is all mine,' we have not owned the absolute title to our property anyway. We own the estate in fee simple, but at the end of the day everything belongs to the Crown, and hence the Crown has the right to resume and so on. We have had that infringement back to only a certain amount of ground underneath us, and only a certain amount of air space above us is included.

All I am seeking to do in this bill is to ensure that, within those strict confines, people have an expectation and a right to have their own privacy and to not be subjected to the nuisance of this technology. If I may use a quaint phrase, the horse has bolted in respect of drones and other technologies. This seeks to simply address one small issue. I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.R. Kenyon.