Court Orders That Need An Expiry Date
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 15, 2008
The last time my editor sent me to the local courts in Liverpool Street, I heard no more than muffled grunts from the distant magistrate via a tinny little speaker next to useless for conveying his words to the straining reporters down the back.
When the former High Court judge Ian Callinan kicked off the inquiry into horse flu last year he was apparently oblivious to the fact he was no longer in Canberra's high-tech shrine to justice and needed to raise his voice if he wanted to be heard.It's pretty obvious that if a reporter can't hear what's said, the chances of getting an accurate account in the media diminish rapidly. So it was good to see a little discussion of these basic communication issues in a report released yesterday by Prue Innes who, in an earlier life, was a court reporter for The Age and spent 20 years struggling to catch what judges were saying.Commissioned by a dozen of the big media organisations, including Fairfax, publisher of the Herald, she looked at suppression orders and access to court documents. Having surveyed all Australian courts, she calculates there are at least 600 suppression orders made each year but admits she has no idea of the real total - many courts, including the NSW District Court, don't bother gathering or publicising them centrally.She found many orders in many jurisdictions remain in force indefinitely as when first made they are to apply "until further order". Very often no further order is ever made, so an order that might have been needed only for days or weeks remains in force long after a verdict is delivered and the need to suppress the information has passed. Anyone who might want to revisit and write about these cases months or years later will be committing a criminal offence if they don't get the order lifted.Ms Innes urged judges and magistrates to include in future orders a sunset clause so they expire once a verdict is delivered or when proceedings have concluded.One encouraging bit of news in the report was that the federal and state attorneys-general are at last working on producing a searchable database of suppression orders to end the ridiculous situation where there is no certainty about which orders are in place in which cases and what those orders say.Many courts have resisted adopting new technology. And those that adopt it often restrict access to the parties in proceedings, making it impossible for reporters to keep abreast of arguments played out on computer networks to which they do not have access.Still, there is progress, including the decision by the NSW Chief Justice last December to allow reporters to use tape recorders for getting an accurate account of what is said. Ms Innes said judges should go further and allow television news cameras into courts as other countries, including New Zealand, now do.When a Victorian judge allowed television coverage of the recent sentencing of the serial killer Peter Dumas it "raised no concerns and we hope this will encourage other judges to do the same". Don't hold your breath.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
Share This