ARA warns on retail crime as Bunnings prepares for rollout of facial recognition technology to combat violence

The Australian Retailers Association wants more government intervention to rein in retail crime as hardware giant Bunnings prepares to roll out facial recognition technology to protect staff. The ARA on Friday used a submission to the Federal Government ahead of May’s Budget to warn that “escalating retail crime is undermining business viability and worker safety” and demand stronger coordinated action to address rising aggression against staff. Chief executive Chris Rodwell said that “growing safety risks in stores”, together with fragmented regulatory and rising compliance costs, were hurting productivity. The submission comes just two days after Bunnings won an appeal that has cleared the way for it to reinstall facial recognition technology in its warehouse stores after a trial in NSW and Victoria that was discontinued in 2022 because of the Privacy Commissioner. On Wednesday, the Australian Review Tribunal overturned a 2024 ruling by the Privacy Commissioner that Bunnings breached privacy laws, instead ruling that the retailer was entitled to use AI to scan customers’ faces to combat theft and violence in its stores by repeat offenders. Bunnings is now eyeing a rollout of the technology across its network. The retailer said its goal was “to reintroduce facial recognition technology within the next 12 to 18 months to keep our team and customers safe”. “Any use by Bunnings will be well considered and supported by the appropriate operational processes and privacy measures, it said. Bunnings’ trial of FRT compared the images against a database of people who were banned — or involved in previous abuse — and if there was a match, security staff were notified. If there was no match, the data was processed and almost immediately deleted. The ART found Bunnings “was entitled to use FRT for the limited purpose of combating very significant retail crime and protecting their staff and customers from violence, abuse and intimidation within its stores”. In making its decision, the tribunal considered “the extent of retail crime being faced by Bunnings staff and customers and, second, the technological features of the FRT system which minimised the intrusion on privacy by permanently deleting collected sensitive information and by limiting its susceptibility to cyber-attack”.