Page 2804 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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MR COLLAERY (3.19): I rise to congratulate the Attorney-General on his interest in these issues and the extent to which he is putting momentum into this lengthy exercise. I do not want to be churlish, but I want to read into the record a criticism by an informed commentator of the tripartite eastern States study. It was published in the Australian Law Journal in November 1990. Mr Starke, QC, said of the discussion paper issued by the three-State working party:
A major criticism of the discussion paper and of the agreement mentioned above is their automatic acceptance of the modalities of the law of defamation as it has been developed unsophisticatedly by the common law, with its undue emphasis on the value of reputation, and its fettering on the freedom of speech as a consequence. This concentration on uniformity, largely for the facilitation of legal proceedings, insufficiently touches the fundamental problem of enlarging the freedom of speech in the interests of a more enlightened Australian society.
I want to put on record why, at the June 1990 meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General in Alice Springs, I did not agree that our Community Law Reform Committee go the same way, along the same route at the same pace, as the tripartite group. I did it for the reasons that subsequently Mr Starke stated more eloquently than I could.
I believe that we need to look at fundamental issues about freedom of speech and media ethics before we decide to join a lawyerised canvas and paint more figures within the same square. I believed that, with the excellent support of our Community Law Reform Committee, the particular personal interest in procedural reform of Mr Kelly and the particular interest of the committee in media ethics, we could break out of that canvas; that we could develop a different approach based on a procedural reform within the Supreme Court Rules so that a number of issues that have lawyerised defamation, and will now continue to, under the tripartite arrangement, could be re-examined and taken to pieces at the beginning.
I accept that at some stage we had to join or work with the tripartite group. In fact, we were working with them. There was regular exchange. I do not agree with the Attorney's decision, because I believe that we should, as a new State, be more reformist. We should chance our arm a little. It did no harm - - -
Mr Berry: Grandstanding.
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