Clendon David: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 09 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11874. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): It is a pleasure to continuethe agreeable tone of this debate which Mr Naylor referred to on behalf of the Greens. This is a good bill; the Greens have supported it and will continue to do so. It does some useful and necessary and indeed some important things around the giving of evidence and other court processes so we will continue to support it.The bill of course amends the Evidence Act 2006 which in itself was quite new 10 years ago. It did some different and interesting things and after 5 years it was deemed appropriate that it should be reviewed to ensure it was doing the best it could which of course triggered the Law Commission review including a document published in 2013. Much of the content of this bill of course does reflect the recommendations brought by the Law Commission. In a sense it is odd—the commission came back with a general statement that the 2006 Act was in pretty good shape that it was quite a fit-for-purpose piece of legislation but then went on to propose 33 amendments to it. They might be contrary statements in one view.Of course many of those 33 recommendations were for so-called technical and minor amendments which is not to say they are unimportant. The chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee commented on the issue of consistency which is particularly important both within pieces of legislation and between pieces of legislation. It is important we get consistency of definition and the like. So although many of the recommendations were deemed minor and technical that is not to say they are unimportant. It is good to see them being enacted within this new legislation.Some of the more substantial changes or additions the committee has made are as has been said around protecting and indeed enhancing the well-being of vulnerable people who often through no wish of their own are obliged to be before the courts. Children and complainants in cases where there is alleged sexual violence or violence of other forms are people who deserve the best safest and most secure environment we can give them when they are obliged to enter the court. The changes in this bill go some way towards achieving that.I will speak briefly to a couple of those. One is that as has been mentioned the legislation will now contain the presumption that a child giving evidence in a court as a witness will be expected to use so-called alternative means. A child is defined as a person under the age of 18. We heard an example from Mr Shearer in his contribution of when a young person was put in a pretty horrific situation by being obliged to be in the same room as a person who that young person believed had done them serious and significant harm.The provisions of this bill will create the presumption that the child will not be put in that situation but also allows for exceptions to that when it is deemed by the judge that it is OK for that young person. You might have a confident 17-year-old who is entirely capable and willing to stand in a court and say their piece. So this bill does not block that possibility but it does put the onus on that being the exception rather than the rule and that is a good thing. We have various technical means of achieving that; there is no challenge about that be it using video or other forms of recording technology or simply screens. It is timely that we do this.The one other significant change in this bill is that it changes the circumstances around the court hearing evidence about a person’s previous sexual history particularly a complainant’s. Sadly there have been too many instances over the years when women particularly in this situation have suffered very aggressive questioning which frankly has been designed to shame them to ruin their reputation and to present them as being promiscuous. This is a very ugly way to have our conduct happening in our courts and this bill will go some way towards diffusing that. Any reference to a complainant’s former sexual history will need to be notified in advance its relevance will need to be demonstrated—that it is appropriate that it ought to come to the court and obviously any complainant will then have the opportunity to develop some response to that. Again it does not exclude that sort of line of questioning but it certainly shall we say creates a little bit of decency around it perhaps if that is the right word.Finally the point has been made also that in the situation when evidence is given on video there is no as-of-right access to that video recording or evidence by any party to the proceedings. A case needs to be made that access to the video or the other recording is necessary and important. Obviously it is important in the general flow of our justice system that all parties to a hearing should have access to all the information that is applicable to it but there are ways of getting around that. I think taking away the as-of-right nature that anybody involved might have access to what may well be video or information that is of a very personal nature—that does again require the approval of the judge to say it is appropriate for that person or that party to have access to it and then there are significant constraints about what can be done with that. It is about protecting privacy; it is about people’s well-being. It does however avoid the risk of any evidence or even the appearance of any evidence being suppressed.With those few words I think I will leave it to my colleague who will be speaking later to make further comments on behalf of the Greens but for the moment we are happy to support this legislation.