Page 2518 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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Not surprisingly, there were a range of views on this matter. The fact is, as Mr Rattenbury said, there is no clear consensus on the issue of how judge-alone versus jury trials should be managed either here in the ACT or in other parts of Australia.
The government took the view, and I said this at the time the bill was introduced, that there would not be a consensus on this matter, that there would be some stakeholders who did not agree with the government’s preferred model, there would be some that argued for Crown veto, there would be some that argued for judicial discretion and there would some that argued for the status quo. And that is exactly what has occurred.
So the government’s view is clear. It was never the intention of the 1993 reforms for trial by judge alone to become the norm in the ACT’s criminal justice system. Regrettably that is what has occurred, and the government believes that that situation must be rectified. So that is what we are going to do. We are going to rectify the situation.
The ANU, in its submission to the scrutiny of bills committee, made a couple of very important and useful points. In particular, they said this:
Criminal justice claims to represent the public and “to do” justice in the public interest. Juries represent one of the few ways in which the public actually are involved in the justice process. Recent seminal research conducted on juries in Tasmania has demonstrated the critical importance of juries as informed opinion-givers and decision-makers. This research shows that a number of potent myths are indeed false. Instead, the research confirms that juries, as representatives of the public, are generally not punitive and have views that are context specific and multidimensional.
That is, juries are capable of understanding complex and difficult evidence and reaching considered, impartial views.
Mr Seselja: But not in regard to terrorists.
MR CORBELL: I will come to that issue. So it is important in the government’s view that we reassert the role of juries at the centre of our criminal justice system for some of the most serious offences that a person can be charged with.
Let me come back to the issue of consultation. The government tabled this bill in February this year, on 17 February this year. It has been on the table in the Assembly for four months. Stakeholders were well aware of the proposal and they were also well aware that the government was open to listening to concerns and issues that stakeholders had. I had a number of discussions with representatives of the bar and the Law Society in relation to the matter. It is fair to say there was no clear consensus amongst the range of individuals I spoke to.
But in terms of submissions, when was the submission that Mrs Dunne alludes to, the submission from the Law Society, received? The bill was tabled in February. It was received on Thursday last week, a full four months after the bill was first tabled. Did I
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