Page 1321 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 5 April 2011
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The model law as adopted by the commonwealth largely forms the existing law of evidence in the territory. Therefore, while this bill is significant for the ACT, it does not substantively change the law of evidence as it now applies to the territory, and it is in that context that we should have regard to the ill-informed comments of Mrs Dunne.
The Evidence Bill is in most respects uniform with the commonwealth and New South Wales evidence acts. There are minor drafting variations which were required to accord with the drafting style of the ACT. These text variations are not intended to change the meaning of the provisions in the bill.
I would like to thank the scrutiny of bills committee for their scrutiny of the bill. While the committee did not have any comments on the substantive provisions of the bill, it did recommend that the explanatory statement would benefit from including more information about provisions which engage rights under the Human Rights Act. Accordingly, I am pleased now to table a copy of that revised explanatory statement which deals with the issues that were raised by the scrutiny committee.
I would add that clarification has been included in relation to clauses 18 through to 20, part 3.2, clause 67 and clause 127 to explain how the bill engages with the Human Rights Act.
The Evidence Bill is the first of a number of bills to be introduced by me this year to reform evidence law in the territory. I would like to take the opportunity now to detail the proposed content of those forthcoming bills because it is in these bills that we will see issues for substantive debate. These bills will be subject to consultation, and stakeholders in the justice system will have the opportunity to examine them prior to them being introduced in this place.
At the end of the evidence reform exercise the laws of evidence in the ACT will be contained in two statutes. The Evidence Bill establishes the Evidence Act 2011 and, as already discussed, implements the model uniform evidence law agreed to by Australian attorneys-general. Given that these laws are designed to have a general application, the second ACT statute will contain all remaining evidence laws which fall outside the scope of the model laws. It is proposed to use the existing Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1991 for this second statute. Other uniform evidence jurisdictions, such as New South Wales and Victoria, treat their excess evidentiary provisions in a similar manner.
Therefore, the upcoming government bill will be solely concerned with amending the existing Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1991. It is proposed that any provisions which will become redundant on the passage of the Evidence Bill today will be removed and all remaining provisions will be updated or modernised if necessary. The Evidence Act 1971 will be repealed and any provisions which need to be retained will be transferred to the miscellaneous provisions act or to other statutes where appropriate and modernised where relevant.
More substantively, amendments will be made to the miscellaneous provisions act to establish a framework to be applied by ACT courts when a party seeks to disclose the
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