President's Annual Report 2018
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING – 25 NOVEMBER 2018
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Work of the Council
This year’s executive consisted of:
Vice Presidents: Terry O’Gorman; Angus Murray
Secretary: Emma Lewis
Treasurer: John Drew
Auditor: Kate Barnett
Executive : Roger Byrom; Chris Main; Eugene O’Sullivan; John Ransley; Daemon Singer, Tina Riveros and Kane Steuer
I want to thank all the members of the executive for their hard work and support throughout the year.
I want to particularly acknowledge the work of Angus Murray, who has contributed enormously to the organisation of this year’s events, particularly those that we co-sponsored with other organisations.
I also want to thank Julie Jansen, who, despite not being a member of the formal executive, has continued to contribute behind-the-scenes to the organisation of our events, particularly on social media.
I thank our University of Queensland interns Nikita Aganoff, Alex Ladd and Amye Fairbairn for their hard work this year, helping us produce a number of high qualities submissions.
I also acknowledge the pro bono support of Kate Barnet of Bentleys (our auditor) and the printer of the newsletter Shotz Print.
A YEAR TO CELEBRATE
I thought for a while about this title. We didn’t win everything this year. It was not a year of unalloyed joy for civil libertarians, as I will relate. But I decided we should celebrate our wins.
And big wins they are.
Firstly, we saw the passage of the Termination of Pregnancy Act, which largely implemented the position for which we have been arguing since 2010.
Then, on 31 October, the Attorney General introduced the Human Rights Bill. A reference to Eddie Clarke’ history shows that our first President Jim Kelly first set out the case for Bill of Rights in 1968. In 2005 we changed our policy to support a Human Rights Act.
The government’s Bill is by no means perfect, but again it represents substantially our position.
The Act will contain a set of fundamental rights that nobody could reasonably object to: the right to life, freedom of speech, freedom from torture, privacy, the right to private property and equality before the law.
A Human Rights Act is not a panacea, ultimately only an active citizenry can protect our rights and liberties. However, the Act will provide a new tool that citizens of this State can use to protect themselves.
The Act will act as a restraint on all politicians by making them justify their decisions against a standard and it will improve government decision making by requiring decision makers to respect the individual dignity of each citizen.
The QCCL congratulates the government on this bold reform.
ANTI-TERROR LAWS
But as has been the case with every report I have given as President, I have to report the continuing challenge to our basic liberties by the latest cascade of anti-terror laws.
Once again this year, we usually combined with other Australian Councils for Civil Liberties to oppose these laws.
The most recent Bill is the Telecommunications Assistance and Access Bill which allows police and security agencies to direct service providers to assist them to get access to encrypted data found on devices. It should be noted that those subject to the Bill are not just behemoths like Apple but includes any old webmaster or small ISP.
The Joint CCLs’ major concerns were:
a) the high risk that the proposed actions to gain access to encrypted information on a case-by-case basis will introduce systemic weakness/vulnerability into encrypted applications;
b) that these actions and risks will be secret and individuals and others relying on these applications for the security of their data and protection of their privacy will not be informed even when the need for operational secrecy has passed;
c) that there is inadequate judicial oversight of the decision-making process and limited independent expert oversight of the process and the actions taken by the providers in each particular case;
d) the extent of immunity available to providers in relation to their actions and to the intelligence agencies in relation to their requests/requirements from providers
e) and the paucity of public reporting required.
Another joint submission, dealt with the Identity-Matching Services Bill. This Bill provided for the sharing of information between the States and the Commonwealth, particularly the aggregation of the various State drivers’ license photograph databases. The legislation clearly contemplates the use of facial recognition technology to search the database for suspects or to identify individuals present at events. This is despite the fact that such technology has been shown to have an error rate in the vicinity of 15%.
The Commonwealth government introduced a law giving the police at airports the power to ask a person to identify themselves when they considered that it was, “on reasonable grounds necessary to identify that person to safeguard aviation security.” The QCCL made its own submission on this Bill in which we characterised this power as being so vague, that it authorised random searches of innocent individuals. The power was sought in the context of the Behavioural Assessment and Security Questioning tool being developed by the Department. Our submission pointed out that these tools have been found to have no basis in science.
Another submission was made by the QCCL to the Crime and Corruption Commission, review of the Queensland Terrorism (Preventative Detention) Act. The submission continued our in principle opposition to preventive detention regimes. It made a series of recommendations for reform to the regime, if it were to continue.
MY HEALTH RECORD
The QCCL opposed the MyHealth record and recommended that people opt out, for a number of reasons. Firstly, referring to the history of poor IT performance by the government which raises security questions. Secondly, questioning the benefits, which will flow from what is nothing more than a non-searchable PDF summary of records and not actual records. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, opposing the creation of a centralised database when the same objectives can be achieved by facilitating local health practitioners place their records on an electronic system through which they can, with the consent of the patient, share data with other health practitioners when appropriate.
PRIVACY
We supported the introduction of an offence in relation to the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images as promoting the right to privacy. However, we did express concerns about the absence of legislation which prevented minors from being charged with child exploitation material offences. We noted that the current policy of relying upon police discretion is unsatisfactory. The Council supported following the Victorian model of introducing specific defences and exemptions from those laws when it involved the sharing of materials between minors.
Rights of those of diverse gender
We made a submission in relation to reforms to the Births Deaths and Marriage registration system to recognise the rights of those of diverse gender.
The application of the principle that the expression of gender identity is fundamental to who we are and the concomitant obligation to remove barriers to its expression, would lead to the conclusion of principle that each person should be entitled to identify their gender as they wish. However, we would also recognised that there are other social interests that may impinge upon the rights of individuals to identify their gender without restraint.
As was noted by the South Australian Law Reform Institute (SALRI) in its report Legal registration of sex and gender and laws relating to sex and gender reassignment, sex is a fundamental demographic characteristic used in social and population analysis. It is a core cross-tabulation for practically all social statistical topics such as employment, education, and health. Sex, along with age, is also essential to the production of population estimates and projections.
So that Institute, accepted that there should continue to be a requirement to register the sex or gender of a child at birth. However, the Institute found significant support for the use of the word ‘non-binary' as a third category.
We also argued that there should be no need for a person who wishes to alter their gender to undergo a procedure or to show they are unmarried.
We agreed with the SALRI that the BDMR Act should be amended to introduce a process for a person to apply for their registered sex and/or gender to be changed, based on the current provisions relating to change of name to allow a person to change the gender by which they are identified by reference to the categories discussed above.
POLICE POWERS
We produced a fact sheet in relation to the special Commonwealth games powers.
DANGEROUS DRIVING
We did not oppose increased penalties in relation to dangerous driving offences, though we noted our position that they were unlikely to make any difference to tragedies on our roads. However, we did oppose mandatory license cancellations.
ESPIONAGE
A joint submission was made with the other CCLs in relation to the Commonwealth espionage and foreign interference legislation. That submission took the view that the legislation contained some appropriate modernising of existing offences. But there were many aspects which were unjustified overreach and overall the Bill would be extremely damaging to many core aspects of Australia’s democracy and open society. Of particular concern, were the expanded secrecy offences.
FOREIGN DONATIONS
A joint CCLs submission was made in relation to the electoral funding and disclosure reform legislation, Commonwealth. The submission did not oppose the ban on political parties and campaigners receiving foreign donations over $250, so long as it was amended to ensure that large charities are not captured as political campaigners. It opposed the extended definition of “associated entities” of political parties” which would have the effect of extending political donation disclosure laws to a wide range of organisations, which are not sufficiently connected with the political process to warrant it.
EVENTS
We ran two very well attended and interesting events.
The first event, we had was a panel discussion on the surveillance society. The panel members were Phil Green, Queensland Privacy Commissioner, Liam Pomfret from the Australian Privacy Foundation and the Norwegian academic Samson Esayas. The session was most ably chaired by Vice President Angus Murray. At think everybody who attended founded a most stimulating discussion
More recently the Derek Fielding Memorial Lecture was a thought provoking presentation by David Marr.
We also co-sponsored some other events, which I will leave to Angus Murray to report on.
The future
It seems to me that this year’s results should remind us that the political system can work. These results have been brought about by work within the political process. Politics is by no means perfect but any alternative must result in the end of pluralism and most likely a substantial portion of liberty.
I am announcing today that this is the last time I will stand for Presidency of the QCCL. I have held this position for 12 of the last 13 years. It is time for someone else with a fresh approach to take over this fascinating but at times demanding post.
I hope that 12 months will be enough time to find a successor and, selfishly, will allow me to see the end of the Human Rights Act process
Thank you
MICHAEL COPE
PRESIDENT
QUEENSLAND COUNCIL FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES
25/11/18