Page 3529 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 August 2008
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because that act provides for the government to say, “This is not compatible with the Human Rights Act but we have very good reasons for that to be the case.” The government does not have to pussyfoot around in terms of that. My views on the Human Rights Act are well known; I am not going to go into that. But there will be instances when it is very much in the public interest to have some law which might be incompatible with it, and the government should say so. I just make that point, but we will be supporting this amendment.
Amendment agreed to.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (8.56): I move amendment No 4 circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 3556].
This amendment and amendment No 6, to which I will speak now as well, allow the media to access the court even when it has been closed to the public. In the recently passed Children and Young People Bill, there were specific provisions in schedule 1 which outlined access by the media to court proceedings involving children or young people that are not open to the public. It states that people who may be present at the hearing of the proceeding—and I quote:
for a criminal proceeding—a person who attends the proceeding to prepare a news report of the proceeding and is authorised to attend for that purpose by the person’s employer …
Of course, it is an offence to publish certain information about proceedings involving children as laid out in the Criminal Code, section 712A. My amendment in no way crosses into that territory. Currently, the bill states that the court may order that the court be closed to the public while all or part of the witness’s evidence is given and that the accused is entitled to a fair and public hearing but the court may exclude the press and public in certain circumstances. So there is some discretion for the court to allow the press to be in attendance.
My amendment, however, gives the media a legislated right to attend and report on proceedings provided that they do not disclose any information which might identify a party to the proceeding. To quote Civil Liberties Australia, “In order that justice is done, justice must also be seen to be done.” Allowing the media to witness court proceedings is one way of protecting fair trials and, while I acknowledge that there are problems with defining who should be recognised as media, these are problems that I believe could be resolved. I am pleased that the government has given me an assurance that it will support this amendment.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (8.59): As Dr Foskey has indicated, the government was originally hesitant about including a provision such as this which specifically allows media access to closed courts due to the expanding nature of the term “media” and who would be caught by that term. However, the government will be supporting this amendment for two reasons.
At this point in time it is still possible to meaningfully distinguish between the traditional media and other observers within a courtroom. In the future, this may be a
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