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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 8 Hansard (27 October) . . Page.. 2240 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

In June 1996, at the expiration of the trial period, the application of the Act to complainants in sexual assault matters was extended for a further two years, expiring on 15 June this year, because it had not been possible to evaluate the impact of the technology in trials. No trials had been conducted using CCTV at that stage; that is, as of June 1996. In addition, it was considered that amendments were necessary to the Juries Act 1967 to facilitate an evaluation, by enabling jurors to disclose to researchers information which would identify the impact of CCTV. Relevant amendments to the Juries Act were introduced in May 1997 and passed last November.

I am informed that, since the passage of the amendments, there have been about three trials where complainants utilised CCTV to give evidence. Delays in the passage of the amendments to the Juries Act, together with the small number of trials where CCTV is used, have meant that the evaluation envisaged has been unable to be carried out before the expiry of the provisions of the Act which applied it to complainants in sexual offence cases. As of 15 June 1998, complainants in sexual offence matters, other than those in respect of whom a court had made an order permitting the use of CCTV before that date, ceased to be able to give evidence using CCTV. Notwithstanding that the evaluation which had been envisaged has not been carried out, I propose that the Assembly support the restoration of the application of the Act to complainants in sexual offence matters. This course has the support of key stakeholders, including the Director of Public Prosecutions, Legal Aid and the Australian Federal Police. I would expect that organisations supporting victims of sexual assault would wish to see the option of using CCTV remain available to those victims.

While it might be said that when the use of CCTV was introduced, in 1991 for child witnesses and then in 1994 for complainants in sexual assault matters, the use of the technology for these types of witnesses was novel and concerns about its impact on the proper operation of the criminal justice system justified calls for assessment, that is no longer the case. The use of CCTV by particular categories of witnesses is now an accepted feature of the criminal justice systems of many Australian jurisdictions.

It is also important to note that the ACT legislation, like its interstate counterparts, enables the court to require that evidence be given in the courtroom, rather than by CCTV, if this is necessary to ensure the fair conduct of the proceedings. A jury warning that no adverse inference is to be drawn from the use of CCTV by a witness is also a requirement of the Act. These provisions are intended to avoid an accused suffering any disadvantage from the use of CCTV by witnesses.

Concerns from the prosecution perspective that the use of CCTV by complainants in sexual assault matters would have a negative impact on a prosecution case have also been dispelled to some extent. It was thought when this legislation came into force that the "remoteness" of an alleged victim who appears to the jury only via CCTV could diminish the impact of the victim's evidence and therefore adversely affect the prosecution case. While I understand that some prosecutors continue to have that concern in relation to trials, there is an acknowledgment that this potential disadvantage must be weighed against the possibility that a complainant will be unwilling to give evidence at all if required to do so in the presence of the alleged perpetrator. It is, of course, open to a prosecutor to attempt to persuade a complainant that his or her evidence should be given in court.

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