Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I will just make a few short comments about this bill in response. The government are clearly of the view that we would prefer to have the bill dealt with in non-controversial legislative time and the bill pass by 1 July. There is no mistake about our position on that. Faced with the position that the opposition do not agree with that and have shifted the date to some time late in September, we took the opportunity of arguing, as we are doing now, that an earlier reporting date would at least make the legislation available earlier.

The reason is that the Evidence Amendment Bill 2008 is, in truth, largely technical in nature. A number of amendments have been made to address developments in case law. The bill also seeks to promote harmonisation in evidence law between Australian jurisdictions. The bill is based on the model evidence bill endorsed by the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General, SCAG, in July 2007.

Considering the nature of the proposed amendments and the consultation processes that were conducted to develop the evidence reforms to this point, the referral, in our view, is not warranted. The consultation included an 18-month review on the operation of the uniform evidence laws regime, conducted by the Australian, Victorian and New South Wales law reform commissions. That is the 2005 ALRC report Uniform evidence law. The Law Reform Commission found no major structural problems with the evidence acts or with the underlying policy and made recommendations to finetune the evidence acts. Numerous consultations were held in every state and territory, and 130 written submissions were considered.

Commonwealth, state and territory jurisdictions worked cooperatively to develop a model evidence bill to implement a majority of the Law Reform Commission recommendations. During the development of the model evidence bill, an expert reference group provided advice on the model bill. New South Wales have already enacted changes to the Evidence Act 1995 based on the SCAG endorsed model evidence bill and are waiting for the Commonwealth bill to be passed before they can commence their act.

There may be some comment from the opposition that this bill does not address the implementation of a general confidential relationship of privilege beyond journalists or the provision extending client legal privilege and public interest immunity to pre-trial hearings. Of course, it is appropriate that the government consider these issues relating to privilege as it develops its response to the Australian Law Reform Commission report Privilege in perspective, which was tabled earlier this year. Journalist shield laws are also being considered separately by the government.

The extension of the compellability provisions to same-sex couples may attract, as we have seen today, some attention. These issues are in fact better examined in the context of the examination of the second same-sex relationships bill 2008, relating to the removal of same-sex discriminatory references in a variety of Commonwealth laws. I thought it was worthwhile putting that in context for the opposition, particularly the shadow Attorney-General, to help them understand our position. We do not agree to the reference. However, faced with the reality of the numbers in this place, we are trying to seek cooperation to find at least an early reporting date so that we can meet the New South Wales requirements and they can bring their legislation into place. I understand the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs does have a heavy workload. I have served on that committee in the past and it is not unusual for it to have a heavy workload. That is recognised. I am confident that the legal and constitutional committee can adequately deal with this in the time available to ensure that the New South Wales laws are not unduly delayed.