Thursday, 31 October 2019

 Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (10:08): It is my pleasure to rise and make some comments on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Bill 2019. This bill seeks to change a number of different things in the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 and the Criminal Procedure Act 2009. Many of these changes have certainly come before the house previously and have returned since 2018, and I will go through some of these now.

It is our view on this side of the house that we will be not opposing this bill, but we will raise a few concerns along the way. We certainly want to highlight some of the important work that has been done with members of Victoria Police, who do a great job on the front line, but also some of the difficulties that now come before us with the unravelling Lawyer X case and how that will be managed with some of the amendments that are being put through in the bill before us.

The first amendment in the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 is to abolish de novo appeals against final orders made by the family division of the Children’s Court. There is also an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 to provide a second or subsequent right of appeal against conviction in certain circumstances and to enable the Court of Appeal to refer certain matters to the trial division of the Supreme Court or to the County Court constituted by a judge for the making of a reference determination. In the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 and the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 the amendments include abolishing de novo appeals against convictions recorded in summary proceedings and providing instead for those appeals to be made by way of a rehearing—I will talk a little bit about that shortly—and abolishing de novo appeals against sentences imposed in summary proceedings and providing instead for a different kind of appeal against the sentences. Finally, the amendments abolish appeals against sentences of imprisonment imposed on appeal from the Magistrates Court or the Children’s Court, and then in the Supreme Court Act 1986 there are a number of consequential amendments.

In summary, the main provisions of this bill are looking at convicted offenders wishing to challenge a magistrate’s conviction or sentence. They will lose the current virtually automatic appeal right for a rehearing of their case by a County Court judge. That is an important part of this bill because we have had—and we are the only jurisdiction left to have—a situation where once something goes before the Magistrates Court there is an automatic opportunity to appeal without any real need for proving the reasons for appeal, and that kind of sits under the whole de novo appeals. The abolition of de novo appeals means that appeals against conviction and sentence will be decided on the basis of transcripts, evidence, witness statements and other material presented previously to a magistrate. So again, this is evidence-based; it is not just an automatic appeal but is evidence-based. It does take away that situation which is basically in place from when we used to have JPs sitting as magistrates in the courts, and many of those were part-time volunteers in their capacity. That kind of gave the person that was facing the courts the opportunity to automatically appeal and have that appeal heard.

Also, new evidence will only be taken if the judge considers that there are substantial reasons to do so in the interests of justice, which is quite important. And in sentence appeals to the appellate court, the magistrate’s reasons must be taken into account and the sentence amended only if the judge finds substantial reasons to impose a different penalty. The new substantial reasons test replaces the test that was in last year’s bill which provided for a higher evidentiary threshold. That was the compelling reasons test. The test was amended following further consultation and compelling reasons was reconsidered as being overly onerous. When the appellate court is considering the imposition of a more severe sentence than that being appealed, then the appellate court must provide a warning as early as possible during the hearing that there may be an appeal in place.

Convicted offenders claiming wrongful conviction of an indictable offence who currently exhaust all avenues of appeal through the courts then need to petition the Attorney-General for mercy. That is something that has been in place. In the future they will seek leave for a second or subsequent appeal to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal will only grant a second or subsequent appeal if it determines that fresh and compelling evidence exists, it is in the interests of justice for such evidence to be considered and it is satisfied that there is a substantial miscarriage of justice. So it takes that plea of mercy away from the Attorney-General and it puts it back into the courts and allows for that process to take place. A lot of that really is in preparation for Lawyer X cases, and as we have the commission go through some of that, we will obviously see more things unfold. There has already been lots of talk that there may be numbers of people that will be asking for their sentence to be overturned as a result of the Lawyer X case.

In terms of some of the detail, part 2 amends the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005. It consists of three divisions. Division 1, clauses 3 and 4, repeals section 328 of the Children, Youth and Families Act and abolishes de novo appeals from the family division of the Children’s Court. Division 2, clauses 5 to 17, introduces a new scheme for hearing appeals from the summary jurisdiction in part 5.4 of the Children, Youth and Families Act. That also replaces the de novo hearing with new appeals processes. I will talk a bit more about the de novo changes shortly. I did mention the reasons for them, but we will get into a bit more detail. Division 3, clause 18, corrects duplicate section 630 in the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005.

The amendments to the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 are in part 3, which is in four parts. Firstly, division 1, clauses 9 to 32, introduces a new scheme for hearing appeals from the summary jurisdiction in part 6.1 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2009. The scheme replaces the de novo hearing with new appeal processes and procedures. Division 2, clauses 33 and 34, empowers the Court of Appeal to refer certain matters and issues arising on certain appeals. Division 3, clauses 35 and 36, introduces a new scheme for a second or subsequent appeal against conviction for an indictable offence. Division 4 inserts transitional provisions.

Then in part 4, which amends other acts, we see that clause 38 provides for consequential amendments to the Supreme Court Act 1986. In part 5, the repeal of the amending act, clause 39 provides for the automatic repeal of the amending act on 3 July 2022. This repeal does not affect the continuing operation of the amendments made by it.

In terms of just going through some of the context of the bill’s provisions, they are largely the same as those that were first introduced in July 2018 in the Justice Legislation Amendment (Unlawful Association and Criminal Appeals) Bill 2018. We had a previous unlawful association bill that we have discussed. Now it is more focused on criminal appeals, so those other parts are no longer in this bill. The provision for second and subsequent appeals to the Court of Appeal, to replace the process of petitioning for mercy to the Attorney-General, has been newly drafted. Again, as I said, because of the more recent situation of Lawyer X we have now seen additional drafts of the bill when it comes to dealing with that set of circumstances. Obviously we have not got a lot of legislation coming through from the Andrews government at the moment, so we are now looking at the separation of what were multipurpose bills into individual bills, to give us I suppose more to talk about.

Looking at the changes particularly, the law of de novo means effectively a new trial—a hearing by a different court. It is a Latin expression meaning afresh, anew or beginning again. As I say, a lot of this bill deals with the de novo appeals process, which is a fresh start, a re-appeal. This originated from 17th-century England when lay justices of the peace presided over local courts and a process of judicial oversight by higher courts, upon appeal, was deemed necessary to ensure accountability in decision-making and in upholding the integrity of the justice system. Obviously that has changed and now we see that, with professionalisation, legally trained magistrates have been in place in Victoria for around 40 years and de novo appeals are seen to be something of the past, not keeping up with the modern legal system. That is why that is being changed.

As I said briefly earlier, Victoria is the last Australian jurisdiction to abolish the de novo appeals process. We have no issue with that. Also, I think it is important to point out that part of this is that we see the courts are really clogged up with a lot of people waiting for both their trials and their sentencing. On the number of the people who are on remand at the moment, if you visit any of our prisons, you get to see a huge number of people who are sitting out there on remand, waiting for their trials. We have got to look at ways of speeding up the process. If we can do that by getting rid of the automatic trial process, while obviously maintaining a fair right to a trial, then that is important. If there is compelling evidence for a rehearing, then that should be the case. One of the big issues that the current government has at the moment is how it manages a better process through the court system, because it is well and truly clogged up. There are a lot of people waiting for a long time and the repercussions of that are huge. As I say, when you have prisons that were meant to be remand-only prisons and maximum security prisons and you have got everyone all mixed in with one another because you just do not have enough beds for everybody, it does not really help in terms of looking at ultimately trying to get people’s lives back on track and providing rehabilitation when you have got courts that are completely clogged up.

The major benefit proposed in the appeal process is to reduce harm and trauma for victims, their families and witnesses through avoiding them having to be recalled and subjected to further examination in an appeal hearing. This is really important. We have said—and I said in a contribution earlier this week—that we need to put victims first in everything that we do. We make no apologies from the Liberal and Nationals parties that we are absolutely for supporting victims in every possible way. We have proposed a couple of amendments to another bill which we hope the government will be supporting. They look at ensuring that victims have the right to say no when prisoners are trying to make contact with them and also putting victim representation on the Adult Parole Board of Victoria. Again, we need to ensure that we acknowledge that when a victim is harmed it lives with them for life. If we can do anything to minimise that process of having to go through that trauma again, having to go through another court case, having to retell their story again, we should be supporting that. That is why we are certainly very much in support of ensuring that we can abolish the unnecessary situation of victims having to retell their stories and go through that process again.

There are currently around 3200 de novo appeals per annum in which the County Court must hear all evidence again and reach a new decision, causing lengthy delays and placing great stress on the court structure across the state. There are huge examples of that. In the Geelong courts there have been logjams. There are situations where people are trying to use more video evidence and other things just to deal with the absolute logjam of court cases, trying to get through the court cases. Again hopefully this will help in some way to reduce the lengthy delays and the stress and what is unfortunately the breakdown of an efficient court system that is able to get people through in a good, timely manner. Reforming the appeals process is expected to bring significant efficiencies to courts through a reduction in the number of actual appeals, particularly in the delays in dealing with each appeal.

Obviously there is little investment in court infrastructure as well. We have got some pretty old systems out there, some pretty old courts. I heard the other day that we have got courts that are still receiving evidence via thermal fax printers. We have got situations where courts are waiting to hear cases. There was one pointed out to me only a few weeks back where they ran out of the thermal roll and the police could not receive the actual evidence through the fax machine. Officeworks did not sell the thermal roll and so they were literally out half a day until they could get that court back to being able to run the case. I mean, this is back in the dark days. This is pretty old. This is hopeless. So we need to ensure that we upgrade basic infrastructure to give the courts the necessary tools to do their jobs and to get some efficiencies back in the system. These costs may seem small to some, but the repercussions of that—the time delays, the costs of holding prisoners and all the rest of it—are huge, and this government is not doing enough to fix some of that.

With respect to the proposed second and substantial appeal right provisions, while it may be a different path, the bill virtually codifies through a statutory right the current petition for mercy process rights and makes it judicially based and transparently independent of the Attorney-General, a member of the executive. The second and subsequent appeal rights provisions in this bill mirror the reforms already undertaken in Tasmania and South Australia. Providing future impartial judicial transparency to the current ‘politically influenced’ petitioning for mercy process may be seen as a preferable outcome in the pursuit of justice, as long as community expectations are appropriately taken into account for these situations.

However—and this is an important thing to point out, and that is why I think this is first and foremost in terms of discussion today—it is also a means by which the Andrews Labor government will be able to deflect claims of procrastination by sitting on cases for lengthy periods while expediently avoiding politically difficult decisions and absolving responsibility in the future for the growing list of petition cases currently before the Attorney-General, including that of Jason Roberts, who was convicted of the 1998 murders of Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller, and also the most recent successful petition case, that of Faruk Orman, referred to the Court of Appeal as a result of the current Lawyer X royal commission, now released from prison due to his conviction being quashed on the basis of the tainted evidence of Nicola Gobbo.

I just want to point out—and I refer to the initially convicted double killer, Jason Roberts, over the horrific murders in the Silk-Miller case—that you have got a situation, and I said this earlier, where families have to relive it again. We just had a commemoration for police officers, which I attended, where I spoke to members of the families of Gary Silk and Rodney Miller. It is horrific that they have got to go through their situation and their recount again with another appeal. I understand the former Attorney-General initially did not support the first presentation for this to be quashed, and we are now in a situation where this is on appeal.

I pick up the point of Police Association Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt, who did talk about the families. Justice certainly does need to be served and we do need opportunities for people to be able to have their case heard if there is fresh evidence, if something comes up later that proves someone’s innocence. Wayne Gatt said that he had spoken to the families in the past 24 hours:

We share their disappointment and heartache in the realisation that their struggle for closure and their two-decades-long quest to move forward with their lives has once again been halted.

We retain our full confidence in, and admiration for the Lorimer Taskforce and the tireless work that investigators, past and present, dedicated to bringing their colleagues’ killers to justice.

The impact that the murders of these police officers had on first responders, investigators, colleagues and friends of the slain officers cannot be understated and should be understood. Lives and careers ended on that night.

Days like today only add to the burden of those who have fought so long and so hard to forget.

We sincerely hope that one day soon this tragic chapter in the history of Victoria Police can be closed for good. Gary Silk and Rod Miller and their families deserve that.

Certainly at the commemoration that I attended at the Prahran station I heard many police talk about this situation and say that it changed their lives in terms of the way police act. It brought in things like the Victoria Police Blue Ribbon Foundation to support the memory of police that have lost their lives as a result of these brutal killings, and it really did put front and centre the impact of what police do in putting their lives in danger each and every day to keep us safe. It is an important case, and we will watch what happens with that going forward.

I did mention the Lawyer X case, which is again something that was poorly, poorly managed. We have seen already lots of reports of a lawyer who was brought in, if you like, to play a double act as an informer, which effectively completely discredits any legal system from being able to provide protection for clients in terms of any evidence they may give. Representing a client and then taking that information and providing it to Victoria Police is a situation that we cannot have. I cannot remember that happening anywhere, and obviously we are watching the Lawyer X situation unfolding with huge interest.

But this bill really does deflect from the government. We know that there are dozens of cases of people that want to get their cases quashed as a result of Lawyer X, who we have seen has acted for hundreds of people. Now dozens of those are effectively questioning the veracity of their cases. You can imagine that it would almost be a full-time job for the Attorney-General having to go through those as they are presented, and having to effectively stamp a get-out-of-jail card because those people are linked to Lawyer X, to Ms Gobbo, as a result of evidence before the royal commission revealing that unfortunately she was acting for people—and we have got one already—and also passing information on, so not allowing fair justice for that person.

It does not mean that these people are innocent, and that is the big issue. It does not mean these people are innocent. When you have got people like Tony Mokbel, who could be questioning his situation because Ms Gobbo acted for him, potentially trying to claim his get-out-of-jail card, that shows that this Lawyer X case is a mess. It is an absolute mess. It has got a fair way to run yet, and we will be watching it with a lot of interest in terms of where it actually ends up, who was involved and who is implicated. Hopefully we can ensure that the situation is cleaned up, so that we do not have situations like this happening again, because it is a huge obstruction of justice. People must have confidence in the legal system. You must have confidence that when you are seeing a lawyer, you have the protection of that lawyer to be able to defend you and not to effectively act as an informer for somebody else or for police at the same time, because that is what we saw.

We have seen Ms Gobbo’s connections to the Labor Party in all of this. That will all unfold and continue to unfold. I cannot recall anything so shocking as what we have seen with this particular case. We have got convicted killers and people who should be locked away forever who are lining up for a get-out-of-jail card, not because they did not do the crime but because their lawyer was acting as an informer and going out and presenting information to the police so that the police could catch them. We all want our criminals off the streets, but you have to have a fair process. You have to have a process that does not put our legal system in jeopardy and make it a shambolic mess, as it certainly was during that period.

As I said, the bill before us will effectively try to clean the hands of the Attorney-General and the government by them not having to stamp the get-out-of-jail card of future prisoners and criminals wanting to get out. But we know that is not the case. We will be looking very, very carefully at who is involved, who is implicated and how this happened. We need to ensure that it gets cleaned up and this government is held to full account in terms of any of these processes going forward, because it is important. Is important for our legal system. It is important that we have a justice system.

I will conclude my remarks there. As I said, we are certainly not opposing this bill, but at the same time there needs to be lots of work in ensuring that we have a justice system in Victoria. At the moment we are seeing the police being attacked on our streets as a result of the protests against the International Mining and Resources Conference. Those people that are being charged are back on the streets that very afternoon. They are back on the streets that very afternoon doing their thing to disrupt, to actually shut down our city and to stop people from getting to work. Internationally our reputation is being tarnished. They are now talking about protesting on Melbourne Cup Day as well.

The move-on laws were abolished by the Andrews Labor government. The move-on laws would be very, very simple. They would in fact warn, would fine and would ensure that those people were no longer in the precinct during that time. They would fix a lot of the problems that we currently have under this government. We do not have a justice system under this Premier; we have a legal system that needs to be fixed.

 Mr TAK (Clarinda) (10:38): I am delighted to rise today to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Bill 2019. This bill serves a range of functions relating to Victoria’s appeals processes. Importantly the bill will modernise appeal processes to increase transparency, minimise harm to victims and witnesses and ensure that the time and resources of higher courts are used in a more efficient and effective way.

We all know and acknowledge that appeals play an extremely important role in the justice system, offering an important safeguard to correct errors and, in rare cases, avoid miscarriages of justice. I am glad to see this bill here today as the bill will make positive changes to our appeal processes to ensure that they are modern and fit for purpose and that appeals are not considered needlessly or in a manner that is unduly burdensome on the justice system, particularly for vulnerable individuals. This can often be the case in de novo appeals. A de novo appeal is essentially an appeal where the entire case is heard afresh as a new trial. I am glad to see that de novo appeals will be abolished under this bill. That will be achieved by abolishing the outdated de novo appeal right from decisions of magistrates in all criminal cases conducted in the Magistrates Court and the Children’s Court and replacing it with a modern appeal process that will allow for the correction of errors. That process will be applied fairly and consistently for all parties and, importantly, will minimise harm to victims and witnesses.

Further to this, the bill also abolishes de novo appeals from final orders of the family division of the Children’s Court. However, appeals to the Supreme Court on questions of law will still be available. These are positive changes, and changes that will have positive outcomes for victims; namely, in most cases victims will no longer need to repeat their evidence as in a de novo appeal. Victims will also have a better understanding of why a sentence has been changed on appeal as the County Court must find there are substantial reasons to do so.

I really do not think that the effect of appeals on victims can be overstated. I do not need to go into details, but I have had a recent interaction with a family tragically impacted by a murder in their family in 2016. The perpetrator in that case is subject to a custodial supervision order under the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Unfitness to be Tried) Act 1997. The level of anxiety and pain and suffering that the family are living through is really visible, and every time I meet with them in my electorate office it is really hard not to get emotional. One of the greatest triggers for the family are the provisions around community leave. They have serious concerns around personal safety and around notice associated with community leave, and I have written to the Minister for Mental Health on this issue. But another major factor that this family and other victims have to deal with is that they have to relive and be reminded about tragic incidents during such processes. Sometimes there can even be a real reluctance about arranging an intervention order because, again, that can involve reliving and being reminded about an extremely painful incident.

As we have heard here today, the de novo appeal currently requires the County Court to hear all of the evidence in a case again, consider all of the issues afresh and make a new decision. When a person appeals against a conviction, victims and witnesses must re-attend court to give their evidence again. So I am glad to see that change under this bill. When we say de novo appeals are outdated, just to put that into perspective, the de novo appeal process comes from the 17th-century English system of appeals. These are positive changes that better reflect Victoria’s modern justice system. Also, I would just like to note that Victoria is the only Australian jurisdiction that continues to have a right of de novo appeal for all appeals of decisions of magistrates in criminal matters, including against conviction and sentence, so the changes in this bill are consistent with legislation in other states.

Another positive outcome, as briefly mentioned earlier, is that these changes will help to increase the transparency of our criminal justice system. By replacing these appeals to the County Court with tailored processes that will require the County Court to consider magistrates’ reasons, this will improve transparency in the appeals process; namely, the County Court will be required to find substantial reasons to impose a different sentence on appeal and to have regard to the reasons of the summary court when assessing whether there are substantial reasons. This is more transparent than the current process, where the appellate court does not need a reason to impose a different sentence or to consider why the original sentence was imposed.

Another substantial change under the bill, and one that many other honourable members have touched on, is the introduction of a second or subsequent appeal right, in very narrow circumstances, to modernise the way our system deals with substantial miscarriages of justice. This also promotes transparency in the justice system by providing direct access to the courts if new evidence comes to light which indicates that a person may have experienced a substantial miscarriage of justice. This is anticipated to reduce reliance on the petition of mercy, which is currently the only avenue for people who have exhausted their appeal rights to have their case re-examined by a court.

So again, I am delighted to make a contribution here today, and I commend the Attorney-General on a bill that will have considerable positive impacts on the criminal justice system, including the wellbeing of the victims and witnesses. Importantly, victims will no longer need to repeat their evidence in de novo appeals, and victims will have a better understanding of why a sentence has changed on appeal. The bill strikes a good balance between supporting and protecting victims and vulnerable people and ensuring an offender who has suffered a miscarriage of justice is able to have that injustice corrected. I commend the bill to the house.

 Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (10:46): I too am pleased to rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Bill 2019. As the member for Caulfield has indicated, the opposition is not opposing this legislation. Looking at the bill, it is largely common sense. It will help improve the efficiency of our courts. There is also the important aspect of taking away the political element to appeals and petitions for mercy, which I might come to a little bit later. This bill is largely reflecting some changes that were brought in 2018 to the Parliament but did not proceed because of the election at the end of last year, so we did not get through them. This has now been split off into a separate bill.

The removal of de novo appeals, I think, is one of the key parts of this legislation, and I think it is a sensible procedure. ‘De novo’, as previous speakers have said, effectively means ‘new trial’ in Latin—so afresh or anew, or beginning again. Under these changes anyone appealing a Magistrates Court decision will not have access to a de novo appeal as of right. Instead, rather than putting victims and witnesses through a whole new court process, the appeal court will simply be able to consider transcripts and video et cetera of evidence that was presented at the Magistrates Court level. I think that is a good thing because it will help free up the courts.

For the public and also for non-legal people such as myself to understand this, de novo appeals originated at a time when magistrates were not in fact trained, when they were effectively justices of the peace and there was an understanding that they would sometimes get it wrong—they might get points of law wrong—and therefore there should effectively be an automatic right to a higher court. That is obviously not the case today. Our magistrates are professional—they are legally trained and they get training as a magistrate as well—therefore that has largely removed the need for these de novo appeals. Equally, I understand Victoria is the last Australian jurisdiction to abolish de novo appeals, so we are not out of step with the rest of the country on that case.

Of course at the moment there are 3200 de novo appeals before the courts, particularly in the County Court, and that does place great stress on the court process. We know that is already the case. The County Court in particular but also the court system more broadly across the state is under a great deal of stress, and there are things that can be done to alleviate that stress. I guess this abolition of de novo appeals is one way to do it.

I might say that stress has implications across the board. I have a couple of courts in my electorate. Sale has a Magistrates Court and until recently had a County Court—it has effectively been suspended in the last 12 or 18 months—and there is one at Korumburra. I was a little alarmed to hear last week from a variety of sources that as of next year the Korumburra and Wonthaggi magistrates courts will be sitting an extra 50 days. When I say I was alarmed at that, that in itself is not a problem; my concern is that we are already understaffed for police numbers in the South Gippsland area. The community has been raising significant concern about police numbers, particularly in areas where police are on leave or on secondment and they are simply not being replaced, and that means we are down on numbers. Adding an additional 50 days of sitting at the Korumburra and Wonthaggi courts will potentially place further strain on police given that they do the transference of prisoners.

This is an opportunity for me to say to the Minister for Police and Emergency Services that we need some assurance that there will be additional resources provided to South Gippsland and Bass Coast to ensure that those police are not further diverted to extra sitting days of the Magistrates Court and that they are still available to undertake general policing duties. That is a serious concern; it has come to me from a number of sources in the last week or so. While I have no issue and I am certainly happy that there are more court days being scheduled, it does need to be appropriately resourced.

The second major part of this legislation is of course with respect to appeal rights and the current situation with petitions for mercy. The previous speakers have outlined a little about how that operates, but effectively what this legislation is doing is taking the petitions for mercy out of the hands of the Attorney-General and placing them back in the hands of the court. As the member for Caulfield indicated, I can understand why the government is quite keen to see this through, because we have already seen one case as a result of the Lawyer X royal commission, with Faruk Orman having his petition for mercy approved by the Attorney-General; he was sent back to the courts and subsequently freed. I fully expect and I think we all know that there is likely to be more of that through the Lawyer X royal commission process, and I am sure the government and the Attorney-General are quite keen to get this legislation through so she is not seen to be dealing with that. I actually do sympathise; I think it actually does make sense. It puts an enormous amount of stress on an elected official to be seen in perhaps the uninformed public’s eye to be giving a fair go to a crook, but it is the case of course that there are circumstances where the courts get it wrong, and therefore I think it is wise to take this decision out of the hands of the Attorney-General and refer it back to the courts. It becomes a far more transparent and open process when the judiciary handles those matters of law and those matters of appeal, particularly when there is new evidence presented, rather than the pressure being put on a minister. That legislation I think will be largely welcomed. There will be some of course who will have their concerns.

Overall I think the two main aspects of this bill are welcome. They will hopefully lead to improved efficiency in our court system. As I said, I have concerns about the resourcing of the court system more broadly. I do wonder, given the case of the number of appeals currently in the County Court, why the County Court has chosen not to continue sitting at Sale as it has done in the past. This is an issue on which I had dealt with the former Attorney-General, who has now just left the room. I think the County Court should be reconsidering the need for its hearings in Sale. Particularly I think the issue they had was a matter of security and a matter of the physical structure of the building being a concern. If that is the concern, the County Court should be dealing with that, and most particularly the state government through the Attorney-General should be dealing with that.

But hopefully this legislation will address some of the concerns that we have about delays. As the old adage goes, ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’, and I hope that this legislation will improve the efficiency of our justice system and make it more transparent.

 Ms KILKENNY (Carrum) (10:54): I am really pleased to rise today in the minutes before question time to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Criminal Appeals) Bill 2019. This is actually a really important piece of legislation, and it impacts an awful lot of people right across our communities throughout Victoria. Of course it is building on our commitment to make our judicial system in Victoria more modern and to make it a better system, a fairer system and a more accessible system as well. It builds on the really good work that started in our last term of government under our then Attorney-General, who is here at the table this morning, and is now being continued under our Attorney-General in this term of the Andrews Labor government. I would like to acknowledge and commend them both for the incredibly important work that they are doing in this area.

We have heard that the proposed legislation today is going to focus predominantly on our appeals process. That is about making appeals more efficient and more transparent and providing greater certainty and consistency, particularly in the areas of sentencing, but it is also really about supporting some of the hidden people in the system, and they are the witnesses who are called to give evidence and often to relive quite traumatic experiences as either witnesses or victims themselves throughout the process of the trial. It is something that can continue for many, many years for some of these people, where not only do they get past a trial at first instance but there is then always that prospect that the matter will go on to appeal and those witnesses will be recalled and, as I said, have to relive the trauma of those events that may by then have happened some many, many years ago. For a lot of people they want to be able to get on with their lives, and we want to make sure that they can do that as well.

But of course the right of appeal in all common-law jurisdictions, particularly here in Victoria, is a really key human right, and it is an important safeguard in our judicial system to make sure that access to justice is provided but also that justice is done. Appeals are a really fundamental part of our legal system and are certainly critical in ensuring certainty and consistency in judicial decision-making. Appeals are an important and useful tool to achieve clarity and certainty for legal practitioners, who can use that clarity and certainty to advise future clients of their prospects at trial and of course their prospects on appeal as well.

I think it is fair to say that here in Victoria we are really fortunate to have quite a robust, incredible judicial system. It is supported by so many hardworking professionals right across the system, from court officers to judicial officers to the legal profession to volunteers who might be working in the system to our police service and to our prosecutors. I want to acknowledge their highly professional approach to our judicial system in Victoria and to thank them for all of their work in really making sure that public confidence in our judicial system is maintained at all times and in seeking to achieve outcomes for all Victorians who may need to—

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr McGuire): Order! There is too much audible noise. I want to hear the member for Carrum.

Ms KILKENNY: Thank you, Acting Speaker. Again I just want to acknowledge all of those who are working in our judicial system to maintain that really high level of public confidence that we enjoy and that we should be very proud of here in Victoria as well. I guess we do need to recognise that there are many players in the judicial system in Victoria: the accused, obviously; the victims; the witnesses; the families; and in particular—after question time we will speak about the particular aspects of this bill—the children who come into contact with the judicial system as well. The bill before us builds on, as I said, all the work that has been done by the Andrews Labor government.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.