Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (16:29): I rise to make a contribution to the Justice Legislation Amendment (Committals) Bill 2024. The purpose of this bill is to reform the process for committal proceedings and for other purposes. The bill seeks to improve criminal procedural laws to enhance efficiencies, reduce delays and protect victims and witnesses, reducing trauma and strengthening protections.
In my former career I predominantly worked with women every single day of the week, and as you can imagine, I heard many, many stories of domestic violence, of crime and of trauma when women had to go and face the court. One of my closest friends had an incident where she was sexually assaulted on a train just heading home from the city, and the will for her to want to speak up was paramount. She felt violated, she felt traumatised, but she also felt very, very scared. Should she go to the police or should she just sit back and say that was yesterday and tomorrow is another day? It played on her mind; what if that had been her daughter or her niece, where this guy had put his hands on her and she had just walked away? So she went straight to the police and she did a report. It was interesting – she actually took a photo of this guy because they moved from a train onto a bus and he sat in front of her. The vision of her coming off the train when she had been assaulted – she got off the train in Seymour, and you change from a train to a bus when you get to Seymour. When she walked out, the vision they had was of a petrified woman who had been assaulted. You could tell by her body language. You could tell by the way she was moving and the way she was looking to see where her perpetrator was. As I said, by the time she got to Shepparton she took a photo. He sat in front of her. She took a photo of him, and she messaged one of her other friends to say, ‘This guy literally has just put his hands on me in the train and sexually assaulted me.’ They went to the police and she made a report, and the process began.
What was really interesting was that they ended up finding out who this fellow was. He was a local lad that worked in a local business. To begin with he denied it, but there were a lot of things that she did very cleverly. She texted her sister, she texted her friends, she had photos, so it was very real, what had happened. Then of course the perpetrator changed his position. Initially he said he did not do it, and then he said she was asking for it – can you imagine? A woman in her 50s, this guy was in his 20s, and suddenly you are turned on and you are told that this person asked for that to happen. She was sort of toing and froing about it and thinking, ‘Should I just leave it? Do I have to go through this court case and defend myself, defend that I’m a decent woman and that I did not do anything wrong?’ So she did. She decided she would follow through with this.
It was very interesting because, as you can imagine, none of us want to be put in that position, and none of us should be. It is very rare, actually, although not so rare as perhaps we think. When I look at my network of friends, particularly my closest friends, this friend is the only person we have ever experienced something like this with so closely. We were rallying around her because we wanted to really stand up for her and help her through the process because she was going to be interrogated and accused of being an awful woman who was asking for it. Do you know what happened the night before the court case? He pleaded guilty because there was so much evidence against him. It is probably just one example of it being terrifying to stand up, and a lot of women do not stand up. For her it was her integrity that was in question. Fortunately there was enough evidence to prove that he did do the crime, and she followed through with it.
Did it end there? No. She became petrified about travelling on public transport, and she hated the fact that her confidence and her fear became very real, and it continued for quite a number of years. It was about three years ago that this happened, and it is only probably in recent times that she perhaps has become, as she would say, back to her normal. For a couple of years, as I said, she would look over her shoulder and she would be very, very nervous. This is the type of incident where, when people have to come to the courts and stand up for what has happened to them, they need to be supported. This bill will do that. It will really help victims and witnesses through a process that is, hopefully, more simplified. It will do so by also streamlining committal processes while preserving the core functions of the existing committal system to achieve early and appropriate resolution of cases. In her case fortunately it did not drag out too long, but it was still about four months before it got to court. You can imagine four months of thinking: how are you going to stand up in front of people and defend your integrity and defend that what happened to you was not right? We need to ensure fair trial rights by introducing mechanisms that encourage early and appropriate resolution of cases and reduce inefficiencies caused by duplicated court procedures.
Specifically, the bill will amend the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 to remove the test for committal, extend the prohibition on cross-examination to other proceedings and strengthen the test for granting leave to cross-examine and will provide for early committal for trial in the Supreme Court. Several of the amendments in this bill follow the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s 2020 committals report. The VLRC tabled its report in the 59th Parliament in September 2020, which made 51 recommendations, including the test for committal to the abolished and cross-examination and case management amendments. As the lead speaker, the member for Malvern, raised during his contribution, this bill only really cherrypicks just some of the recommendations.
On 24 October 2018 the Victorian Law Reform Commission was asked to review the state’s committal system and pre-trial procedures. Committals are the process in which a magistrate decides whether the evidence is strong enough to support a person accused of a serious crime for trial in a higher court. As most indictable criminal cases start in the lower courts, they progress through the committal stream until either the accused is committed by order of the Magistrates’ or Children’s court for trial or sentence in a higher court, the matter is solved summarily or the prosecution is discontinued. The Criminal Procedure Act 2009 sets out the role of the lower courts in managing indictable cases, which includes ensuring a fair trial through a disclosure of evidence and cross-examination of witnesses, narrowing the issues in contention and determining how the accused proposes to plead.
In the VLRC’s report in 2020 it was documented that the current committal system filters indictable cases, with roughly a third of all indictable stream cases resolving in the lower courts and another third committed to the higher courts following a plea of guilt. Whilst cross-examination can be stressful, as I have pointed out, delays and failures by the prosecution to communicate what is happening in a case were described as a frequent problem by victims and witnesses involved. Over time in the state justice system’s history committal hearings have served an important role within the criminal justice system and will continue to do so into the future.
Section 97 of the act sets out the purpose of a committal proceeding, and recommendation 3 of the VLRC’s report calls for it to be abolished. Paragraph (b) of section 97 refers to the Magistrates’ Court determining whether there is evidence of sufficient weight to support a conviction for an offence charged. Other jurisdictions across the country have made changes to their committal procedures in recent decades, including New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia. No single committal system is the same, and Victoria’s context presents unique challenges. Following recommendations made by the Victorian Law Reform Commission, the bill will abolish the committal test, allowing magistrates to focus more on active case management in the committal stage.
While we are talking about legislation and talking about changes in crime and legislation, I think it is really important that we also acknowledge the police, who deal with these issues every single day. Last Friday I joined my local police, who did a walkout and stood out the front of the Shepparton police station, taking industrial action calling for a fair and decent wage and increased and improved conditions. It was noted that this was the first time the Shepparton police have ever stopped work for industrial action. Acting Inspector Dean Williams, who has spent 34 years in the force, said working conditions were not enticing new recruits into a policing career and police are under pressure to make up shortfalls in shifts. He said that they sign up for good pay and good conditions, that they deserve better and that members have moved off to Queensland to take incentives that police have been offered, and he said many younger recruits have quickly moved on to different careers when conditions in the force have not lived up to their expectations.
I think it is really important that we know we need to do better. We need to support our police officers. We need to help victims of crime, and we need to make sure the process as we move through the courts is simplified. There is still so much more that needs to be done, and the Labor Allan government are failing to manage crime.
Finally, we are not opposing the bill, but we do need to get it right. In the short time I have left, I do support the member for Malvern’s reasoned amendment.