Page 64 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 16 February 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (9.10), in reply: I must say that I am disappointed at the straight-out statement of conservatism from the Opposition that is leading them to vote against this amendment, supported by Mr Stevenson. When this idea was first floated, there were some comments in the media from Mr Humphries that led me to believe that the Liberal Party would support it. Some politicians make a career on whipping up fear and hysteria about sexual assault and sexual matters, and Mr Stevenson is the epitome of that. He is the politician who has made his career on sex and sexuality. He runs around talking about pornography: We are all about to be engulfed by an immoral tidal wave, we all have to do something about sex and sexual assault and rape and all the rest of it. But, when we bring forward a concrete proposition to give justice to the victims of sexual assault and their families, he votes against it.
I challenge Mr Stevenson - although this will not occur because the good sense of the majority of this Assembly will see this law passed - to explain to the parents of a five-year-old who has been sexually assaulted why they cannot even go to a court and seek justice. The law as it presently stands says that that five-year-old's evidence cannot even be heard by the court.
Mr Humphries: No, that is not true. If it is corroborated it can be brought before the court.
MR CONNOLLY: That is right. Unless you have corroboration, it cannot be heard. An adult victim of sexual assault can go to court and get justice, but you cannot if you are a kid - at the moment under 14. Mr Humphries says, "We will accept that 14 is perhaps a bit much, but at seven you cannot go before the court". We had an example of this in Canberra recently which resulted in a woman setting up a picket outside the Supreme Court for a period of time. Mr Stevenson, could you explain to that woman why her child's case could not even be heard by the court? That is what this provision is about. It is not about saying that you will always get a conviction. It is not about saying that it is better that innocent men go to gaol than that one guilty person get off. Ms Szuty put it best. Ms Szuty said that this is about ensuring that the evidence can be heard by a court - not that it will automatically be accepted, not that it will automatically result in a conviction, but that it can be heard.
The process Mr Humphries went through he took from a question he put on the notice paper today, which we managed to get answered within a couple of hours because it was germane to this debate. It related to the Federal Police's standing instructions on how you go about bringing a case for prosecution, so there has been some testing there. Do they think the child is telling the truth? Children can lie, that is true, Mr Humphries. Adults can lie too. There is very little difference. There is a filtering process there. When it gets to a court - we are talking here about a child giving an uncorroborated, unsworn statement - the judge will always have to decide whether a child is able to give evidence. That is a question that will go to the judge's or the magistrate's assessment of the circumstances of the individual child. I would say that most seven-year-olds and six-year-olds would be able to give evidence. I cite Cross on Evidence, paragraph 811, on the general principles of unsworn evidence:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .