Page 268 - Week 01 - Thursday, 14 February 1991
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There is a broader immunity from proceedings to the royal commissions as a whole than the inquiries, but these are fairly minor points.
When we come to the crucial points, such as the power to compel witnesses and the offences for failure to give evidence or for disrupting the body - I will use the term "the body", rather than royal commission or inquiry - there is little difference. It would be, it seems, an efficient method of conducting public business, therefore, to have one form of inquiry and not to have two Acts which duplicate each other in 80 per cent of the legislation and then have some minor additional powers to the royal commission.
One other additional power that the royal commission has is that there is an express power in a royal commission to pass certain information on to the police. I would suspect that that would be a power that a person inquiring under the Inquiries Act would probably implicitly have anyway. I would take Law Office advice on that.
We have two bodies established with broadly similar powers, but different titles. I question why that is considered necessary. I would suggest that it would be a sensible thing in any legislature, if you have two bodies of identical powers to do essentially the same thing, to look at consolidating them into one Bill.
That being so, the Opposition will be proposing that it is unnecessary to proceed with the Inquiries Bill, that one piece of legislation will do the trick, and that it would be sensible to take the Royal Commissions Bill which contains the broader range of powers, so that the one inquiry body is fully clothed with all necessary power and can exercise them as is necessary.
In more minor matters one would be unlikely to be expecting to exercise the power to arrest a person who fails to come forward. I notice that under the Electricity Act there is a specific statutory expectation that the Inquiries Bill might be used. In minor matters you would not necessarily use all the powers, but on the crucial powers - the power to summon witnesses, to deal with persons who disrupt the inquiry, to require a person to give self-incriminatory evidence with the protection in relation to other proceedings - there is no difference.
The difference between a board of inquiry and a royal commission in Victoria, as I said before, is described by Hallett as really insignificant. He notes that boards of inquiry are a fairly unique phenomenon in Victoria. He says that he has found no reference to boards of inquiry in England akin to those appointed by the Government of Victoria.
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