Page 2514 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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will require more jury trials, and we believe that is a good outcome for our legal system.
As I have said, the bill is responsible because it guards against the risk of a dispassionate jury being unable to be found. More accurately, there are existing checks and balances in the law that guard against this risk. I have set out the five checks and balances we have relied upon in assessing this bill and I believe those five reasons, along with my general views on the importance of jury trials, vindicate the Greens’ decision to support this bill. We will come to Mrs Dunne’s amendments later in the discussion.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.25): I think it is appropriate to reiterate what Mrs Dunne said earlier about the Canberra Liberals’ support for jury trials. I think there is a need to reiterate, because this government and this attorney are not good listeners.
Let me make this very clear. The Canberra Liberals support the notion that jury trials should be the rule and that judge-alone trials should be the exception that is allowed only in exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, this bill fails at both ends. It allows some serious alleged offenders to continue to be able to choose, at their own discretion, a judge-alone trial, but it does not allow any discretion in other cases where there may be a reasonable argument for having a judge-alone trial.
Jury trials are a time-honoured and generally successful method for dealing with criminal matters. Their use was established back in the 13th century and is enshrined in the Australian constitution. On the basis of the constitution, the High Court of Australia has held that trials of criminal offences against commonwealth law must only be dealt with in front of juries. That said, various models are used across several jurisdictions in Australia to allow judge-alone trials, including in the ACT. This bill seeks to change the current arrangements, but the bill fails in that endeavour.
This bill is ill conceived, piecemeal, discriminatory, inconsistent, arbitrary and founded on wrong principles. It introduces bad policy. It was developed in the absence of stakeholder consultation. It fails to take into account feedback that has emerged since its introduction in February. And, worst of all, it is being pushed through today for political expediency and not for any real benefit to the administration of justice in the territory.
There can be no more stark evidence of the failure of this bill than the advice that my colleague Mrs Dunne received in the departmental briefing on this bill. She asked officials what options the department had considered before it drafted the bill. The response she received was that the department did not know, because the person who is working on the issue had left the department. The department did not know, because the person working on the project had left. That is a sad indictment of the kind of process that has led to this legislation.
All of this is underscored by a lack of consultation with stakeholders, evidenced by the variety of views from a wide range of sources, with no response or even acknowledgement from this government.
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