Page 6078 - Week 18 - Thursday, 12 December 1991
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that a sexual act occurred. That is quite understandable to anyone who has had dealings with children who have been sexually abused and who have been involved, tragically, in these types of situations.
I found in the courts that sometimes - depending on who you were in front of - some people would be reasonable, but others would not. Generally, the courts would have to go along with the strict standards of proof that are required and often it was very difficult to get a prosecution up, sometimes because of that very technical point. Children in sexual cases, in my experience, generally tend to be very truthful because of the rigours of cross-examination and the traumas that they go through in terms of, firstly, being interviewed by police in relation to what occurred, and then going to court and being cross-examined - just going through the trauma of a court case. If a kid is making it up, it becomes pretty clear very soon that that is so and the kid tends to say, "Yes, I have made it up" or changes the tune and, of course, the case goes nowhere, and that is fair enough.
It struck me as being quite tragic when children I had as witnesses, who I believed were quite truthful and were trying to the best of their ability to recollect some pretty abhorrent things that had been done to them, could not see that the system adequately protected them because the law, as it stood, was all in favour of the defendant and the offence could not be proved because of technicalities. That destroyed the child's faith in the system; it destroyed the parents' faith in the system, if the parent was not a defendant. I do not think that that is particularly satisfactory.
I recall one case in the Magistrates Court where there were about 60 or 70 allegations of incest involving a little girl. That case did not go any further, as the magistrate, quite rightly, on the law, threw the case out because that little girl could not be definite in terms of the exact circumstances of when the offences occurred. That, I think, is wrong.
This is a very timely and sensible amendment. I think it has the support, or should have the support, of all members of this Assembly because it does plug a gap, a rather horrible gap, in our criminal law here in the Territory.
Going further into the amendment proposed by Mr Collaery and accepted by the Attorney-General and me, I am pleased to see that Mr Collaery has put subsection (7) in, because that alleviates my fears in relation to subsection (9). Subsection (9) refers to section 443(3) of the Crimes Act, which, basically, gives the court power to give cumulative sentences. If you are convicted of more than one offence, a court can deem that you serve a period of time for the first offence and then a further period of time for the second offence.
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