Page 1583 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 17 May 1994
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I said a great deal about closed-circuit television and how it should be used and how it might affect the process of the court discovering the truth in particular matters when we debated in 1991 the principal Act we are amending tonight. Other members at that time said a great deal about the nature of closed-circuit TV and how it should affect children's evidence. I will not go into most of that tonight, but I think it is probably too early yet to give this concept a complete and unqualified green light.
It appears from what the Attorney has said about the Australian Law Reform Commission - I have had less opportunity to examine that than Ms Szuty has had - that there is some support for the use of this concept by practitioners, and apparently quite wide support for its use by the children who were part of the process of giving evidence using closed-circuit television. I must express my concern that there would still be circumstances where closed-circuit television might be a negative process. It might, in fact, cause the court to be less able to achieve its task of discovering the truth of a particular matter. I think that is illustrated by the circumstances surrounding the decision the Government has made not to apply this legislation to child defendants.
The argument in favour of closed-circuit television evidence by children is that it takes the child away from the environment of the courtroom. They are sitting in a comfortable place, surrounded by people they know and trust. The child, feeling relaxed, at ease, and not intimidated by the environment, is able to say what he or she has seen or heard in an environment where there is not the potential for them to clam up, to decline to say or to not want to say what they saw or heard. That is a good thing for the most part, particularly for witnesses who are subject to some trauma, witnesses who are reporting on some traumatic incident such as an instance of child abuse.
In the case of child defendants, Mr Deputy Speaker, in a sense a different consideration might be said to apply. A defendant in any proceedings is expected to tell the truth when giving evidence, even in circumstances where one might expect it not to be in that defendant's interest that he or she tell the truth. Unfortunately, there are many instances where people in adult courtrooms are confronted with the difficulty of telling a story which is not the truth because it is in their interest to tell a story which is not the truth. Many factors come into play in influencing that defendant to depart from the story which is untrue and to tell the truth. I mean by that things like the environment of the court itself. Courts are unusual places. There is a lot of wood panelling. Sometimes there are pictures of magistrates or judges or the Queen or something up there. There is a crest above the bench. The magistrate, or the judge, in a robe, sits on a high bench, much as you are, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is necessarily an intimidating environment.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Not as impressive, though, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps not quite as impressive, Mr Deputy Speaker, but intimidating, yes. It is naive to suggest that that is an anachronism. That environment is created to make people believe that it is their obligation, their duty, to tell the truth. I have no doubt, having worked in courts, that many people sit in a witness box and feel the sense of being in an important place, and being subject to mysterious forces and circumstances which require them to tell the truth. It could be said that it is much easier to tell a lie in your living room or in your car or on the street than it would be to tell it in a place like that.
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