@daphne diaphanous said:
Would he be permitted? If not, even if he takes them, he wouldn’t be able to show them to anyone legally, which means no evidence.
Who says he wouldn’t be able to show them to anyone? And who is going to stop him taking the picture?
First of all there is no general legal right to privacy in Australia (although there are right to privacy specified in certain laws).
For instance, you cannot record a conversation without the participants’ knowledge (NOT permission, a common misconception). You can record someone by waving a microphone under their nose, then if they don’t want to be recorded all they have to do is stop talking. The point is, they are aware that they are being recorded.
You can film or photograph anyone doing anything provided they are not engaged in private acts in private. There are some new laws related to video taping of a sexual nature but they would clearly not apply in this situation and whether or not a strata committee meeting room is a private place is moot.
But if there was a real danger that these people would claim the person was not at a meeting when they were, a selfie with the others in attendance in the background would be an innocent way of documenting the event … provided you didn’t record sound without their knowledge.
There might even be a by-law that says you aren’t allowed to tape or photograph meetingd. Even so, I can’t imagine any circumstances at Fair Trading or NCAT (formerly the CTTT) that a picture taken as proof of attendance at a meeting would be rejected as evidence because photography “wasn’t allowed”.
I think maybe we’ve all watched too many episodes of “The Good Wife”.