Juliana ADDISON (Wendouree) (10:59): I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate and speak in support of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Integrity, Defamation and Other Matters) Bill 2024. This is a bill which proposes a variety of small but important improvements for our justice system and our integrity agencies.

As always, I would like to thank the Attorney-General for the work that she is doing in the justice space as well as her very hardworking ministerial office and the department for the work they did on the reforms in this bill, which has included consultation with a vast number of relevant government bodies and stakeholders.

Among amendments proposed in the bill today are those impacting particularly on women’s safety, an issue that it is very, very important to me, including the removal of a potential deterrent to making reports to police and making permanent the option to use digitally recorded body camera evidence as statements in family violence proceedings.

I am proud that the Allan Labor government is continuing to deliver our strong community and women’s safety agenda. Victoria is leading the nation in the prevention of family violence and the focus on women’s safety. We have implemented all 227 ‍recommendations of the Royal Commission into Family Violence and dedicated more money and more effort than any other Australian government, but we know there is more work to do. I would like to acknowledge that we have got the Minister for Consumer Affairs in the Parliament and the role that she has played as the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, a really, really important role in terms of the implementation of those recommendations from the royal commission.

Just a few weeks ago, the Allan Labor government announced further measures to build on our ambitious agenda, which will change laws, change culture and deliver new support for victim-survivors, with upcoming justice reforms around family violence, intervention orders, stalking and personal safety. These reforms will enable a better response for victims when violence occurs, and further, these reforms will deliver a stronger justice response that holds offenders to account and continues Victoria’s world-leading prevention response, stopping violence before it starts.

Significantly we are rolling out the saturation model in my community of Ballarat, a first for Victoria and Australia, following the murders of Samantha Murphy, Rebecca Young and Hannah McGuire earlier this year in my community, a model that will support new and existing programs and activities to change attitudes and behaviours and that will drive down violence against women and girls.

The Justice Legislation Amendment (Integrity, Defamation and Other Matters) Bill 2024 proposes a variety of improvements, including to the use of evidence in family violence proceedings, to defamation law in relation to online content as well as reports to police, to the use of electronic signatures in criminal matters, to the provision of court data for statistical analysis and to the operation of several Victorian integrity agencies. In order to achieve this, amendments are made to more than a dozen pieces of Victorian legislation, including the Defamation Act 2005, the Criminal Procedure Act ‍2009 and the Crime Statistics Act 2014.

One minor amendment with important implications is the repeal of section 387P of the Criminal Procedure Act 2009, which will permanently expand the statement options for proceedings related to family violence offences and family violence intervention orders. It will do so through allowing the use of digitally recorded evidence-in-chief, a statement recorded by police as soon as practicable after a family violence incident, using a body-worn camera. Allowing victim-survivors the option of using recorded evidence in family violence proceedings means that they are not required to relive their experience later on in order to produce a statement in writing or in a police interview. Instead these recordings can be used in court in the place of a written statement. This is very important – not re-traumatising victims who have already suffered so much. This can be a vastly improved process for victim-survivors. The resulting digital evidence can also be more powerful, as well as less easily minimalised, than a written statement read aloud by a judge. Other benefits may include the earlier resolution of cases and a reduced burden on police.

In Victoria the use of digitally recorded evidence in family violence proceedings was introduced on a trial basis starting from 2018 following recommendations from the 2015 Royal Commission into Family Violence. However, as it stands, this trial is set to conclude in October. The bill removes that sunset provision from the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 so that digitally recorded evidence will remain an ongoing option for family violence proceedings.

This bill will also amend defamation law to remove a potential barrier to reporting crimes to police. Concerns regarding the potential for defamation action and in some cases the outright use of this possibility as a threat have the potential to dissuade victim-survivors from seeking police assistance. This is addressed through amendments to the Defamation Act 2005, which will extend the defence of absolute privilege to all reports made to police.

The defence of absolute privilege currently applies to certain proceedings from courts, tribunals and parliaments, meaning that statements in these contexts are completely immune to defamation suits. When applicable this can lead to the summary dismissal of defamation proceedings or discourage them from commencing at all. Without absolute privilege the alternative defence of qualified privilege would require proving that several criteria have been met through time-consuming, stressful and potentially retraumatising court hearings. Victim-survivors should be able to report to police and be absolutely secure in the knowledge that they will not be subject to defamation proceedings as a result. There should be no doubt for anyone that reporting to police is not defamatory, and these amendments will ensure that.

Other amendments to the Defamation Act relate to digital intermediaries, being third parties that provide or administer online services where content is published. This could cover a search engine or a social media platform, for example, or even a person who sets up a page on a social media platform. A digital intermediary is not the original author or poster of potentially defamatory content but rather someone who has provided the means for that content to be disseminated. Our current defamation laws are ill equipped when it comes to the liability of digital intermediaries, and greater clarity is needed.

To this end this bill proposes reforms that will exempt a certain class of automatically generated search results from defamation claims; allow materials of amends made in response to defamation claims to include offers to block content; require that courts consider certain matters, including privacy and safety, before granting discovery orders in defamation proceedings; provide a defence for digital intermediaries if they have sufficiently effective mechanisms to receive and action complaints; empower courts to order that digital intermediaries remove access to defamatory material from their platforms; and facilitate the electronic provision of defamation-related documents when indicated. Together these reforms will better equip our justice system to deal with defamatory content in the digital age.

The bill will also clarify some current uncertainty surrounding the use of electronic signatures in criminal proceedings. With the proposed changes electronic signatures will be valid for all documents under the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 without requiring any specific consent from the receiving party. This will reduce the administrative burden on police and courts as well as improve processes for all involved, as witnesses will have the choice of signing electronic documents out in the community rather than attending a police station to sign hard copies.

Another area that I will quickly talk about is court data, and it is a key aspect of this bill in statistical analysis and policy creation. Currently the chief statistician can require the provision of police law enforcement data for use in research and reporting, yet the same does not apply to data from our courts. The result – a lack of consistent data – hampers their ability to analyse trends and journeys across the justice system and use this analysis to better shape policy.

We all want good policy and we want evidence-based policy to make our justice system better and fairer and safer, and that is why it is so important that we resolve issues regarding access to court data. With the time I have left I commend the bill to the house.

You can take a look at more of my speeches to Parliament here.