Open-Street CCTV in Australia: The Politics of Resistance and Expansion

This paper summarizes the first systematic attempt to document and assess the extent of open-street CCTV systems in Australia. In addition to providing empirical data, this paper argues that it is tempting for Australian scholars, and those elsewhere, to view the UK ‘surveillance revolution’ as the harbinger of inevitable global trends sweeping across jurisdictions. However analysis of the Australian data suggests that the deployment of CCTV in other national contexts may follow substantially divergent patterns. While the Australian CCTV experience follows many trends exhibited in other nations, it is nevertheless significant that the diffusion of CCTV in Australia has been more restrained than in the UK. We suggest that the divergence between the UK and Australian experiences resides in contrasting political structures and the consequent variation in the strength of debate and resistance at the local level.