Huo Raymond: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHuo Raymond: Victims of Crime Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17366. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you—Carol Beaumont: Excellent decision.RAYMOND HUO: Excellent decision—thank you very much Mr Chair. Much has been said about the issues the problems and the situations that victims often find themselves in under the existing legal regime. Victims feel marginalised by the court system and their anguish is often exacerbated by the justice process and the adversarial criminal justice system. Our adversarial criminal system is bipartite and it attempts to recognise only the accused and the prosecution. Victims often feel marginalised and it is not fair to the victims and their families.Part 2 of the Victims of Crime Reform Bill concerns amendments to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989. The Law Society in its submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee raised concerns about the move to allow children’s pictures in court saying that young victims should be protected from the judicial process. The proposals of this bill would enable the families of murder victims to attach photographs of their loved ones to statements presented to juries and allow child victims to show their drawings to the court.The Law Society in its submission supported the move in the legislation to give adult victims the right to read their statements in court but its family law section chair told the Justice and Electoral Committee that the children who have been victims of crime should not be subjected further to the court process. He said he could not think the move to have them directly involved in impact statements would be an advancement for children’s rights.Talking about the impact statement the Chief Judges of both the High Court and the District Court expressed their concerns in their short but powerful submissions to the select committee. They are concerned that the proposed new section 17AB inserted by clause 11 enlarges the purposes of the victim impact statements. That particular section is in Part 1 but the judges’ views are valid in terms of Part 2 as well. At present section 17 of the Victims’ Rights Act limits those purposes to informing the court about the effect of the offending upon the victim which is information the court must take into account when sentencing an offender. But the proposal under this bill—especially pursuant to the relevant provisions of the Sentencing Act 2002—would create a certain kind of expectation on the part of the victims which the court has no capacity to meet. So that was the reason the judges expressed in their submissions—that it would create a kind of expectation that the court has no capacity to meet and that it would create a further confusion that could well be understood as entitling the victim to express his or her view about an appropriate sentence for that offending.But under the Sentencing Act there is no provision that enables the court to take into account the victim’s views about an appropriate sentence and indeed to do so would conflict with one of the underlying principles of sentencing—that similar offenders should receive similar sentences for similar offending in similar circumstances. So perhaps the most difficult but arguably the most important is the balancing exercise where all aspects of the issues the interests and the concerns of the concerned parties should be identified acknowledged and balanced.Also another concern expressed by the judges is related to new section 22 inserted by clause 15 because it would create a new right for victims. That particular provisioncreates a new right for victims of a specified offence to read his or her statement in court unless the judicial officer considers it inappropriate to do so because of the existence of one of the conditions set out in section 22(2).In cases where there are many victims of specified offences and many victims they believed that a judge would be reluctant to pick and choose between the victim impact statements to settle upon those to be read. The regulatory impact statement given in connection with the revised victims’ policy did not in itself quantify the likely additional demands upon the court system. But in the judges’ view that will be significant.As I said the Chief High Court Judge and the Chief District Court Judge both expressed concerns in their submissions that it would be difficult for a judiciary officer to impose time limits on a victim reading a statement. They would be very unwilling to interrupt a victim to avoid causing the victim further upset. They also noted that when there are many victims in a case as I said previously the judge would be reluctant to pick and choose and the likely outcome would be all victims giving a statement. This of course would add considerably to the length of time that sentencing takes in the courts. The judges believed that additional demands on the court system would be significant. They said that the Victims of Crime Reform Bill could create expectations that a victim could express a view on sentencing that is not provided for in our law.There is a genuine concern and that concern relates to a certain kind of issue of how to strike a balance—on the one hand the victims’ concerns and anguish are genuine and on the other hand the views expressed by the judges and the other submitters are valid. Thank you.