Victoria to tighten workplace surveillance rules

Sydney (20 July)

The Victorian Government will introduce surveillance protection laws to limit the use of biometric data, AI-driven workplace surveillance tools, and automated employment-related decision-making.

The Government plans to restrict the use of biometric data to situations where no other data collection options exist and ban the broad use of emotional biometric data, it said on 20 July.

Employers will also need to consult workers about surveillance schemes, inform them of changes to workplace surveillance, and use human reviews to ensure they do not make discriminatory employment decisions, the Government added.

“Every worker has the right to know when, why and how they’re being watched on the job – these laws make sure of it,” Minister for Industrial Relations Jaclyn Symes said. “We cannot allow discrimination to sneak back into the workplace via AI,” Premier Jacinta Allan added.

Victoria’s reforms come just over a year after the Victorian Parliament’s Economy and Infrastructure Committee urged the Government to pass a raft of technology-neutral workplace surveillance reforms.

“[The state’s] laws have not kept pace with … technological advances and the growth of surveillance devices in the workplace,” the Committee found. Victoria’s Surveillance Devices Act – which bans recording devices in workplace toilets, washrooms, and other private areas – defines spaces in ways that fail to account for most workplace surveillance, the Committee said.

Half of organisations surveyed by the Australian HR Institute use camera-based surveillance and 39% use computer-based surveillance, the industry group said in a July 2024 submission to the Committee.

The Committee recommended the three main sets of changes proposed by the Victorian Government.

But the Business Council of Australia – in a July 2024 submission – recommended that the Victorian Government avoid reforms to surveillance legislation until the Federal Government completes its ongoing overhaul of the Privacy Act.

By Avinash Govind