Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Economy and Infrastructure Committee

Inquiry into Workplace Surveillance

Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (10:27): I rise to speak on the inquiry into workplace surveillance conducted by the Legislative Assembly Economy and Infrastructure Committee, which I had the honour of tabling yesterday in this place. As chair, this was a really interesting inquiry for the committee to undertake and explore, considering the kind of world that we now live and work in. When I think about our everyday lives and the society that we do live in, I think I can confidently say that we are all used to some type of surveillance in our lives. It may be a camera at the front door on the doorbell or a camera on our phone. We have data that is collected by social media platforms and the apps that we all put on our phones, and agencies and companies collect and store personal data for the efficiencies of the world that we live in. But this inquiry had a laser focus on our workplaces. We started to explore and ask the questions around how employers use surveillance, why they are conducting surveillance, what technologies employers are using to watch their employees and what happens to the collection of that data once it is being stored by employers.

Workplace surveillance certainly has accelerated in the last few years and it is a worldwide thing, the result of the technology advancing so quickly but also the shift that we have seen with more people now working from home and remote working. In that short amount of time we have had surveillance go beyond the cameras, which I have talked about, to now more recording, with your computer tracking your key logging. It might be wearable trackers or it might be biometrics, such as your fingerprint or blood, or neurotechnology and artificial intelligence.

Going through this inquiry it was clear that our privacy and surveillance laws have not kept up with the technology.

Throughout the hearings and the evidence that we heard what was frightening too was that employees are unaware. Most of them are unaware of the extent of surveillance in their own workplace. Employees told the committee that a lot of the time they did not know they were being surveilled until there was either a problem or an issue that needed to be raised or there was disciplinary action being undertaken. That is not to say that surveillance cannot be legitimate – employers need to undertake surveillance, maybe for health and safety reasons – but it does become problematic when employers are using surveillance in covert situations and other than for the purpose that was originally intended. These privacy concerns then cause distress for employees where their employers’ surveillance practices can be described as excessive or unreasonable.

After considering the best practice across our country and overseas, the committee has made some recommendations to introduce new workplace surveillance laws that are technology neutral to ensure that surveillance is reasonable, necessary and proportionate to achieving a legitimate objective. A Victorian employer should also be required to notify and consult with workers about workplace surveillance practices and to disclose how workers’ data will be collected, used and stored. These recommendations that the government will now consider are really about getting that balance right – the balance between the workers’ privacy and their rights and the workplace having reasonable objectives and purposes for surveillance.

I want to thank the committee and some of the organisations, individuals, experts, unions and academics that presented and made submissions. We do appreciate all the time taken to give us a great sense of what is currently being undertaken in our workplace surveillance practices. I would like to also extend my thanks to the past and present committee members who worked on this inquiry. I will thank also the secretariat – Kerryn Riseley, Marianna Stylianou and Abbey Battista – for their diligence and dedication in preparing this report. Our committee ran smoothly, and as chair I appreciate the support that they offer me in my role.

I would like to speak to this again in this place. I think there is more to say around workplace surveillance. There was a minority report tabled in the report, and I would like to speak to that on another date, so I am just flagging that. As a government we fight incredibly hard for our workers’ rights, and I look forward to the government’s response.