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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (9 May) . . Page.. 1256 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
discretion to a court and to the Mental Health Tribunal in every instance of a bail application by a remandee. We are talking here about bail applications by remandees. We are talking about people who have not yet got to the point of trial, people who are simply seeking an order in relation to their remand on bail as they await trial. We are talking about people perhaps involuntarily detained in the psychiatric unit of the Canberra Hospital. That is who we are talking about. We are not talking about the conduct of major criminal trials. We are not talking about the conduct of trials. We are talking about applications by people on remand, people who are still presumed innocent before the law, and we are talking about people who are being detained because they are ill.
Mr Humphries: Why can they not appear by audiovisual link?
MR STANHOPE: The Attorney, I think to his embarrassment, makes very much of the position that the Mental Health Tribunal has never not allowed a person involuntarily detained in a psychiatric unit to appear in person; that they have never utilised the opportunity provided to them to take evidence by audiovisual link. Guess why not, Attorney. Because there is no audiovisual link. The hospital psychiatric unit decided that they would not put an audiovisual link in-unless of course they can communicate through airwaves. Perhaps they do have some special capacity!
The reason the Mental Health Tribunal do not use audiovisual links to take evidence is that there is no audiovisual link. I understand from evidence before the Estimates Committee that the professor of psychiatry at the unit is totally opposed to the prospect of evidence ever being given in this way. The minister for health is here. He will perhaps remember the professor of psychiatry giving that evidence. She cannot imagine a circumstance in which it would be appropriate for a person involuntarily detained to be required to give evidence by audiovisual link. It would not be acceptable to her for people who have been involuntarily detained because of their mental state to be required to give evidence to the tribunal by audiovisual link.
The Attorney is not up with the debate. He has not done his homework. One of the great worries in this debate is that the government never went to the minister for health's department when they conjured up this scheme. They said, "Let's apply this audiovisual link to the Belconnen Remand Centre" and some bright spark said, "Let's apply it to the Mental Health Tribunal."
At estimates, I asked Mr Moore's departmental officers to explain to me the process by which they were consulted. Ms Penny Gregory of the minister's department said to me that there was no consultation.
Mr Humphries: That is not true.
MR STANHOPE
: Let us go to the Hansard. The minister will recall that I then asked questions of the professor of psychiatry about her views on the prospect of people involuntarily detained in a psychiatric unit being required to give evidence, and the response was quite clear that it was not a prospect that she would ever be comfortable with or support. I cannot remember her precise words, and I hope I have not misquoted her, but her attitude was very much: "I do not think this is a particularly good idea." I am
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