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Victoria moves closer to national evidence laws
4 July 2005
Victoria has moved a step closer to adopting national evidence laws with the release of a joint discussion paper with the Australian and NSW law reform commissions, Victorian chairperson Professor Marcia Neave said today.
“The government has asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission to work with other law reform bodies on their review of the Uniform Evidence Act. This Act is currently used in federal, NSW, ACT and Tasmanian courts and implementing the Act in Victoria would help to harmonise evidence laws across the country.
“The Victorian commission has made a significant contribution to the Discussion Paper and we’ll continue to work with the other states to produce a final report by the end of the year. We are also looking at what needs to be done to introduce the new version of the Act into Victoria and will report back to government about this at the end of the year.
“The Discussion Paper is a comprehensive review of the Act and covers such issues as client legal privilege, hearsay evidence, and warnings and directions judges give to juries.
“Client legal privilege for instance only applies in trials, it doesn’t apply to investigations before the trial begins. There’s also a discussion of whether qualified privilege should be available to protect professional relationships, such as journalists and their sources of information.
“The commission has already made recommendations to bring Victorian hearsay evidence laws into line with the Uniform Act in its Sexual Offences and Defences to Homicide reports and the paper contains more discussion of hearsay amendments.
“Judges’ directions to juries about the general unreliability of children as witnesses would be prohibited under the paper’s proposals. It also calls for a targeted inquiry into judges’ comments to juries,” Professor Neave said.
The Discussion Paper is available at: www.austlii.edu.au/other/alrc/publications/dp/69.