Page 2866 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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regarding the proposed interview rooms for which the Australian Federal Police have secured funding. It is not clear to us at this stage where that lies.
The development of video evidence-taking skill in this Territory will come out of the child evidence by video link procedure that this piece of legislation legitimises. It is still necessary to continue evaluating the outcome of the video link. For that reason the Bill implicitly acknowledges that a watching brief is going to be kept. There is a sunset provision in the Bill for it to expire at the end of 1992 unless it is repealed by 1 January 1993. So, Mr Speaker, we will need to hear a report from the Attorney well before the house rises so that we do not leave this matter in abeyance over the Christmas and vacation period. Some tidying up will be required. I commend the Bill to the house. It is modern legislation and it has done much to put the Territory courts on the national map.
MR STEFANIAK (11.37): The Liberal Party supports the Bill, of course, Mr Speaker. Indeed, it is a Bill which had its origins in the former Alliance Government. It is a very important Bill, Mr Speaker. It is one other step which slowly redresses the imbalance in the criminal justice system whereby victims are very much the forgotten people. Unfortunately the system, in recent years, has handed too much to the rights of criminals and not enough to society and victims. Of course, the saddest victims in the criminal justice system are, perhaps, children. I have been involved, both as a prosecutor and as a defence counsel, in many cases involving children, especially the very sad cases of indecent assault and incest involving children. I think it is essential, and very timely, that video evidence be taken.
I know that the Chief Magistrate, Ron Cahill, has been very keen to see this happen and has been innovative. Indeed, he has been a pathfinder in this area and I applaud him for that. He and I have been involved, over the years, in a number of cases where children have given evidence. They have been quite distraught and I am sure - I know - that many of those children have suffered emotional trauma and mental trauma as a result of giving evidence in court. With our adversarial system, children, when they give evidence, can be cross-examined, and cross-examined at length.
Unfortunately, in cases such as incest, indecent assault and rape involving children, one of the classic ways for defence counsel to cross-examine is to attack their character, to make attacks on the child. That is an unfortunate part of our system. Unfortunately, perhaps, defence counsel are quite entitled to do so in the interests of their clients; but it has a dreadful effect on children, much more so than on adult victims and adult witnesses.
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