Page 2524 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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The risk is that if we are in a situation where we must have a jury trial, in a small community like the ACT, the potential for a stay for a lengthy period or a permanent stay is quite significant. Mr Rattenbury said one per cent. One per cent is significant and if the person who is waiting for that matter to be dealt with happens to be incarcerated, that is even more troublesome. These were the points made by the human rights commissioner. If we have a blanket approach proposed by Mr Corbell, the potential for stay, either long-term or permanent, is significant.
We are a small community. It is not like New South Wales where you have a notorious case in Batemans Bay or somewhere like that and you can move the matter to Sydney. We are not like that. We do not have that capacity. We are a small, landlocked community. We have one court system. We do not have the capacity to move trials around to allow for a fair trial.
These are all serious considerations that have not been given any attention by this Attorney. I commend the amendments to the house. They have the support of a wide cross-section of the community in the legal fraternity in the ACT and the support of the human rights commissioner.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.05): The government will not be supporting the Liberal Party’s amendments because, fundamentally, the Liberal Party’s amendments entrench the status quo. They achieve the same outcome that has been achieved in New South Wales: the use-your-discretion model, which has seen an increase in the number of judge-alone trials in New South Wales.
Let me deal with some of the specific elements of Mrs Dunne’s amendments. Mrs Dunne suggests, for example, that a reason for a judge-alone trial could be that juries will be unreasonably burdened. There might be lengthy and complex material, which is likely to be unreasonably burdensome for a jury. I just find this attitude patronising—to suggest that ordinary citizens will be burdened with complicated information that only lawyers and judges can understand. There is plenty of literature and analysis around this that makes it very, very clear that juries are capable of understanding complex and difficult concepts and evidence.
Indeed, the presence of a jury requires the different sides in the case to actually present the material in a manner that juries understand. In that respect, it increases the transparency of the criminal justice process because it requires prosecution and defence to explain these matters clearly in a straightforward manner and it improves the public’s understanding of the issues that are in contest in a trial. So it is a good thing to have the presence of a jury there dealing with these complex matters. I do not accept that because a trial is going to be long or because evidence is going to be complex that disqualifies ordinary citizens. But that is the suggestion we have from Mrs Dunne.
Equally, we have the suggestion that there might be a risk of jury tampering and that if there is a risk of jury tampering we should just avoid that from the outset by not
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