The minority Liberal government must do everything it can to ensure a massive privacy breach at Risdon Prison never happens again.

It has taken the government almost a year to answer my question on notice about the surveillance breach, which involved a recording device that was unlawfully left in place for months after recording the one meeting it was approved to record.

Now that she has finally responded the Attorney General Elise Archer has confirmed that the government recorded 723 conversations without authorisation over a two month period.

These meetings did not just involve inmates and their lawyers – they would have also involved a range of meetings between prisoners and professional providers, including Centrelink, medical professionals, housing providers, financial counsellors, community corrections or the Parole Board.

This is a massive breach of privacy, and in terms of meetings with lawyers it is a huge breach of legal professional privilege that should never have happened.

These professionals and inmates should be informed of the government’s breach which means their conversations have been unlawfully recorded.

And the government must do everything in its power to ensure it never happens again.

Ella Haddad MP  
Shadow Attorney General
Shadow Minister for Corrections