Two Perth councils are moving to ban smart glasses from public facilities including swimming pools, gyms and youth centres, as Western Australia simultaneously introduces the nation's toughest restrictions on the wearable devices in public schools. The City of Vincent has become the first local government in WA to formally consider such a ban, while the City of Wanneroo is set to go further — putting a vote to ban the technology from all city-owned facilities to its council.
Councils act as smart glasses raise covert recording fears
At its ordinary council meeting on 15 September, City of Vincent councillor Alex Castle moved a notice of motion for officers to prepare a report examining the privacy and safety implications of smart glasses at council facilities, with a likely focus on the Beatty Park Leisure Centre.
"Smart glasses are becoming cheaper, more capable, and increasingly difficult to distinguish from ordinary eyewear," Cr Castle told the meeting.
She acknowledged that Beatty Park already had rules prohibiting cameras in and around change areas and requiring explicit consent before filming patrons — but said those rules were designed for a different era.
"If someone holds their phone up at a swimming pool, people around them can generally see that filming may be taking place, and they have an opportunity to move away, to remove their child from view, or to object to being filmed," she said. "With the increased availability and use of smart glasses, it's important to review these rules to consider this emerging technology."
The motion passed unanimously, and a report is expected to be presented to council before December.
At the City of Wanneroo, councillor Alex Figg moved a separate notice of motion aimed at updating conditions of entry at all city-staffed facilities to explicitly prohibit photography, filming and video recording using smart glasses. The motion, framed as an effort "to protect the privacy of users of City of Wanneroo facilities to the greatest extent that we can," was scheduled for a council vote on Tuesday night.
Disability exemptions a key concern for councillors
While discussion at the City of Vincent meeting was broadly supportive, councillors were careful to flag that any ban must not disadvantage people with disability who rely on smart glasses as assistive technology.
Vincent Mayor Alison Xamon said the issue was personal as well as policy-driven. "My son is one of those people who are increasingly reliant on the emerging technologies around vision for people who are vision impaired," she said, adding that it would be "really critical" that privacy safeguards did not adversely affect people with disabilities.
Councillor Sophie Greer echoed those concerns while underlining just how difficult the enforcement challenge had become. "I don't want to see disabled people caught in the crossfire because of someone else's predatory and gross behaviour," she said.
Greer noted that she had tried to identify smart glasses wearers during a visit to a pool that very morning. "It is impossible," she said — a comment that underscores the core problem: the devices are, by design, indistinguishable from ordinary prescription or fashion eyewear.
The devices allow the wearer to capture images, video and audio at the press of a button, and have attracted the informal nickname "pervert glasses" because bystanders typically cannot tell when recording is taking place. There is growing community and regulatory pressure around smart glasses in Australia, including calls for manufacturers to build in stronger privacy protections by default.
WA schools get nation's toughest smart glasses ban
The council moves come alongside a landmark announcement from WA Education Minister Sabine Winton, who declared that all WA public schools would introduce the country's most comprehensive ban on smart glasses from the start of term 4.
Under the new rules, students, staff, parents, carers and contractors will all be forbidden from wearing or storing smart glasses on school premises. Critically, the ban also extends to any offsite location where students or staff are representing their school — covering sports events, excursions and similar activities.
"Smart glasses may look cool but there's absolutely no place in our schools or classrooms for them," Minister Winton said, pointing to the devices' growing popularity and affordability as key reasons to act now rather than wait for an incident.
"I just think it is a really important stance to take before this gets ahead of us," she said. The education department confirmed it had not recorded any instances of smart glasses being used irresponsibly in schools to date, with the minister describing the measure as explicitly preventive.
Principals will be able to grant exemptions for students with special needs or medical conditions. The minister also urged private and independent schools to adopt equivalent bans.
WA's approach goes further than other states: Victoria has announced a ban on wearable devices including smart glasses in schools, but not until January 2027, while South Australia's government has indicated it is seeking advice on current laws and exploring options for nationally consistent legislation with the federal attorney-general.
What happens next
For the City of Vincent, officers will now prepare a detailed report on smart glasses policy for presentation at a council meeting by December. The City of Wanneroo's vote this week could make it the first WA local government to impose a facility-wide ban outright.
The moves reflect a broader pattern emerging across the country: institutions of all kinds — schools, councils, sporting facilities — are scrambling to update rules written before wearable recording technology became small enough and cheap enough to be genuinely undetectable. With no national framework yet in place, WA's state government and its local councils appear to be leading the way.
