Page 1581 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 17 May 1994
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Further argument was put to me, however, that by enabling child defendants to give evidence by closed-circuit TV we are making it easier for children to give evidence in defendant situations, which may be delivering the wrong message to potential child offenders. A further issue is that these same children would need to be in court for the remainder of the proceedings anyway, and they would need to be specifically removed to give evidence by closed-circuit TV.
To summarise, I do not regard the arguments proposed by the Australian Law Reform Commission in support of child defendants giving evidence by closed-circuit TV as unconvincing, given the references in the report to the international covenant and given that Queensland currently has provision in its legislation for this to occur. While I am not yet convinced of the need at this time to amend the Government's proposed legislation to give child defendants the opportunity to give evidence by closed-circuit TV, I wish to encourage the Attorney-General and members of this Assembly to further consider the matter. Options we have available to us are a possible reference by the Attorney-General to the ACT's Community Law Reform Committee; or, alternatively, members of the Assembly's Legal Affairs Committee considering the issue as a possible reference. I mention at this stage that I have not discussed the matter with my Legal Affairs Committee colleagues, but it may be an issue we could consider.
I have spent some time outlining the process I have been through in familiarising myself with the issues in this Bill and in discussing an issue that I feel has been inadequately dealt with in the Minister's presentation speech. I would like to conclude my remarks by spending some time in commenting on what I believe is a significant advance in the ACT, that is, giving children the opportunity to present evidence by closed-circuit TV as a general rule. There are reasonable exceptions to this - where a child prefers to give evidence in the courtroom rather than by TV; where unreasonable delays would occur if a child were to give evidence by TV; or where a court believes that there is a substantial risk that proceedings would be unfair if a child were to give evidence by TV. As the Minister's presentation speech says, this is designed to preserve a court's common law responsibility to ensure a fair trial and is intended to be an infrequently used safeguard.
While I support the Government's initiatives with this legislation, I urge members to consider further the issues I have outlined. I look forward to hearing from other speakers in this debate, in particular the Attorney-General, who will, I trust, discuss the issues I have raised in his concluding remarks on the Bill.
MS ELLIS (8.09): Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak in support of this Bill. The aim of the Bill is to make it easier for children to give evidence in court. Sadly, it is not uncommon for a child to be required to give evidence in court in cases where the child has been abused, often sexually. It is tragic that the accused person in such cases is often well known to the child - a relation or a family friend. That relationship makes it especially difficult for the child to give evidence in the presence of the accused person. It is often found that the trauma a child experiences in giving evidence against an alleged abuser, particularly an alleged sexual abuser, is as severe as the trauma of the assault itself.
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