Summary Offences (Drones) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 25 February 2016.)

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:05): I share the member for Heysen's concern for privacy, and I remember this bill coming to the house sometime last year and having a discussion with the member for Heysen about it. I am very interested in it, particularly from a law enforcement perspective. I think the use of drones will increase in all areas of life but my particular area of interest is in law enforcement and I think that we will have to cross many bridges as this technology is used more and more in that context.

The government believes and I believe that the creation of a specific offence such as the one proposed in this bill is unnecessary, given that the use of drones is pretty comprehensively addressed already under the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations and that using a drone to record private activities would be captured by the surveillance devices legislation of this state. The drone is merely a tool by which an optical surveillance device may be utilised, it is not the device itself.

The Surveillance Devices Act makes it an offence to knowingly use an optical surveillance device to record or observe the carrying on of a private activity without the express or implied consent of each party to the activity. This offence already carries a severe penalty. If you use a drone to do that, you can be charged with that offence already under South Australian law.

Commonwealth law around the use of unmanned aircraft is extensive and principally addresses the issue of the risk to safety. There are strict liability offences for flying a drone closer than 30 metres to vehicles, boats, buildings that are not on your private property and without explicit permission from the private property owner, or over backyards and any populated area such as beaches, parks, sports ovals, children's playgrounds and that kind of thing, where there is a game on. You must keep your drone within your line of sight. That does not leave much room for drones to move without authority or without a licence. It does not leave much room for more legislative control.

The government believes and I believe that the existing law does adequately cover the concerns that are genuinely being attempted to be addressed by the bill. The proposed offence does not particularly improve on this existing law. If legislated, it would probably prove difficult and resource intensive to enforce, to charge and prosecute successfully. I do still have concerns about its application in terms of law enforcement, whether there is a general exemption for law enforcement bodies and how that would work. I am still a bit confused about that.

In closing, the government is very aware of the challenges that these kinds of rapidly-evolving technologies pose for good policymaking and it will continue to respond to those challenges in the most appropriate and effective way. However, this bill is not the most appropriate and effective way and, for that reason, the government opposes it.

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (11:08): I have known for some time that the government was not going to support this legislation because, as the member for Little Para has just indicated, he had indicated some interest in the proposal when I first introduced it last year but then, towards the end of last year, advised that the government position was that there was already legislation which adequately covered the field.

With respect, I would disagree with that. Indeed, I would encourage the government to consider this legislation again at a future time because it seems to me that resoundingly when I am out in the community people are conscious of the potential for both the invasion of privacy and the creation of nuisance by the use of drones. I made it clear when I opened the debate on this particular bill that I am not trying to stop the use of drones, whether it be by law enforcement, in the case of the special interest of the member for Little Para, or whether it be for real estate.

I absolutely acknowledge that people in real estate find it a boon to be able to go up above someone's property and photograph it from a height to get a perspective on it, although I did mention, I think, in the opening remarks on this bill that there had been an incident in Melbourne where a real estate agent did just that and inadvertently captured the nude sunbathing of the lady next door. That was then published as part of the real estate promotion, which might have made the house very sellable, but it certainly did invade that person's privacy.

I equally recognise that in agriculture, particularly, there are huge benefits to be gained from the use of drones. Against all that, as well, there is the aspect of kids just playing with them. I know that when I was a kid, if we had had the opportunity to play with drones, we would have been taking them up literally in droves, pardon the slight pun. I am not trying to stop the use of drones at all. My bill is quite specific, in that it is simply seeking to limit the use of drones above someone else's property. In particular, there is a limit—from memory (I do not have the bill in front of me), I think it was 30 metres or roughly 100 feet—to give people that assurance that people could not fly something above their property within 100 feet.

I do not know whether I mentioned it, as it is so long ago that I introduced this bill, but originally the law in its concept was very simple. When you owned a piece of land, you owned that land down into the centre of the earth and up into the heavens as far as they went. As modern life has impacted, that has reduced and reduced, and obviously we no longer own everything that is beneath the land because, largely, the mineral resources and so on belong to the Crown and we no longer own what goes up into the heavens now that planes are flying there and we have bodies like the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

The member for Little Para mentioned two other bits of legislation that potentially, he says, already cover the field. There are a couple of things I would point out about that, and I accept and I do not deny that those two pieces of legislation can be relevant. The reality of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in this country is that they are not going be policing anything that comes within a hundred feet of an individual's house. They are interested in ensuring the airspace above the population generally, so no-one really is likely to be impacted by this sort of activity that I am talking about, to the extent that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority would take any interest.

Equally, I do not for a second suggest that the surveillance devices legislation is not relevant and could not be used. However, as the member for Little Para would be well aware, in this state it is often the case that, when an offence is committed, the police often charge people with numerous offences under lots of legislation. I know that because I have negotiated with police at the courtroom: 'Alright, if you actually agree to drop that, we'll plead guilty on that instead.' We often have cases where more than one piece of legislation can be applied to any particular offence.

All I was trying to do in this bill was something that the public at large actually thinks should already exist. Everyone I have spoken to is absolutely in favour of it. I first introduced this—which I reckon was about February last year because it was around the same time I came out of not talking to the media for a few years—to bring up, on radio, the fact that this government is planning to create1,000 apartments on the section of the Parklands that is the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site. I think this is one of the most despicable and heinous things that a government could do. They are the trustees of that on behalf of the people of this state, and they are prepared to just throw away that trust.

I was angry enough about that, and I remain angry enough about that, to come out of my self-imposed exile and speak about it. I happened to go to a function that night—it must have been the beginning of the Festival or the Fringe—and it was not that that people wanted to speak to me about as much as this bill about the drones. People are concerned about the capacity of drones bearing cameras, particularly with every phone these days having a camera on it. People were concerned about the invasion of their privacy.

It seems to me that there is also huge potential for the creation of nuisance—whether there is a camera on a drone or not—with someone flying a drone through someone's backyard, when they are holding a barbecue, because of a neighbourhood dispute. Yesterday, I had an email into my office with a complaint regarding a house, not in my electorate as it happens, that had been divided into two flats and the owner of one flat had installed fixed cameras to film people in the backyard of the other half of this divided house.

I agree with the member for Little Para that there is a community desire to address this issue of privacy and that it is a complex area and that the government needs to do something. I am sad that they have not agreed to agree to this bill. I would have been quite content to put some amendments into it, if they saw that it was necessary. It still seems to me that this is something that the community at large would not only support but positively desire us to do, and the government, in saying no to this bill, is making an error of judgement.

That being the case, I can count, and I have always been able to count. I have spent 15 years on the opposition benches, so I realise that once the government decides that it is not going to support a bill, no matter how sensible it might be, then there is nothing to be gained by furthering the debate. On that note, I therefore close my comments and the debate.

The house divided on the second reading:

Ayes 19

Noes 23

Majority 4

Second reading thus negatived.