Hansard debates

Debate resumed.

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (16:01:55) — I just want to continue my contribution. Just to recap, the legislation overhauls the state suppression order laws to ensure Victorian courts are open and transparent and the laws are there to protect the public's right to information. This is the key proposition of the bill.

During the debate other issues on a general law and order theme were raised. The coalition went back to the argument about baseline sentencing. I did make sure that the judgement of the Court of Appeal of Victoria and the facts of the matter were reported again. I remind the house that the Court of Appeal in Victoria wrote off the Napthine government's baseline sentencing scheme and described it as 'incapable of being given any practical operation'. It went on further to dismiss the legislation in probably the harshest criticism I have ever seen, by saying that it had an 'incurable defect'. There is no argument about taking it on appeal to the High Court or anywhere else. If it is incurable, that is that. It could not work, it was never going to be able to deliver what was intended and that is the way the Court of Appeal in Victoria wrote it off. So let us not have any more revisionism about this. The Victorian people should not have amnesia about what actually occurred. That should hopefully address that matter once and for all.

What the bill does is help rebalance issues about suppression orders. We had a situation where there was an unprecedented rate in Victoria, with almost 1600 suppression orders in three years. One of the other arguments that the media have had on this was that there was not sufficient explanation as to why these suppressions were being put in place on what was happening in the courts. The Herald Sun in an editorial in March of this year, under the headline 'Court secrecy must stop', went to a critical point on this issue about balance. I quote:

In a digital age where information spreads quickly and widely, the reporting of certain information which could prejudice a jury does need to be restricted. But the professional media's reporting requirements and contempt laws have long-established principles regulating reporting. Suppression orders are often superfluous.

I think that goes to the heart of the matter and to what was really going on with this tension between the public's right to know and what the courts were looking to do to protect critical cases and to make sure that cases in the future were not prejudiced. The Victorian government got the eminent Frank Vincent to conduct an inquiry. Frank is a former Supreme Court of Appeal judge. I have acknowledged previously and I acknowledge again his long and distinguished career as a jurist, and I also acknowledge the advice that he provided to this Parliament with this review and also in the last Parliament with the Betrayal of Trust report.

What the Victorian government is doing is supporting in full or in principle 17 of the 18 recommendations, while one recommendation is under further consideration. Just to go through these, the review recommended a range of improvements to existing suppression laws, including restricting the use of suppression orders so that they cannot be made if other laws already prevent publication; allowing adult victims of sexual assault or family violence to disclose their identity after the offender has been convicted, including where they were abused as a child; allowing previous relevant convictions of youth offenders to be reported if the person continues to engage in serious offending as an adult; and specifically requiring courts and tribunals to provide written reasons for making a suppression order. That is an important issue because that provides the ability to have scrutiny and accountability with regard to the reasons.

Another recommendation is that all suppression orders are treated as interim orders for the first five days so that interested parties, including the media, can make submissions against the need for the order. That means that they can be contested and the arguments can be raised again in court, and again I think that is good for transparency and accountability.

There is also improving judges' understanding of suppression order laws, with new programs and materials developed by the Judicial College of Victoria. That refers to the fact that the Vincent review found that too many judges and magistrates had limited understanding of their responsibilities under the Open Courts Act 2013.

Another proposal is creating a central, publicly accessible register of suppression orders made by all Victorian courts and tribunals. I think that is a really important initiative as well. I know from the first stage of my career as a journalist that that was always something that you wanted to be able to do — go to one central data bank to be able to assess whether there was a suppression order or not so that you could comply with the law.

I think this is a suite of admirable reforms which will go a long way to providing greater transparency. I commend the bill to the house.