Taxi driver redux

Sophie Delaney and Vivienne Topp write in today’s Sunday Age on XFJ (the first mention of the case that I’m aware of in the broadsheet):

Not only is this a disturbing example of tabloid-driven law-making, and an undermining of the rule of law, it is also potentially discriminatory. People found not guilty due to mental illness offend because of their illness. An indiscriminate exclusion of such people from employment or participation in society is particularly questionable in the year when Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities has become fully operational.

It is starting to look like the Charter will inevitably be drawn into this case, despite its near miss in the VCAT judgment.

There are currently three Charter angles:

First, there’s news of an action to overturn the suppression order on XFJ’s name by VCAT:

Ms Kosky’s comments came as the Herald Sun launched legal action to unmask the man, who stabbed his wife to death in a frenzy and whose identity is suppressed by a tribunal order.

It was pointed out to me that, if the Herald Sun was able to use the Charter to reveal XFJ’s identity, then my feared head-on crash may be more of a love-in. Indeed. But it isn’t an especially likely outcome. As the Herald Sun’s owner happens to be a corporation (Herald and Weekly Times), it has no rights. This seems to be the basis on which Channel Nine’s action to get Underbelly unsuppressed came a cropper. It shouldn’t have, of course, as the VCAT suppression order (like King J’s) affects the rights of Melbournians to ‘receive information’, part of their Charter freedom of expression. As well, at a stretch, the Hun can argue that those Melbournians’ right to movement might be harmed by not knowing XFJ’s identity (as some may be deterred from taking taxis.) Even more extreme, they could claim that their rights to security or life are at stake. But that’s a two-edged sword: XFJ’s rights against discrimination, privacy, security and (at a stretch) life (and maybe his family life) are protected by the order. 

Second, there’s Kosky’s promise to appeal against the VCAT judgment:

We will look at every avenue for appeal so I can actually fix that difficulty, so everyone can feel safe when they hop in a cab. That’s what I want to be able to guarantee,” she said.

Presumably, the government will argue that Macnamara misinterpreted the word ‘comfort’ in the Transport Act’s ‘public care objective’ as about upholstery rather than the personal foibles of Melbournian taxi drivers. It’s inevitable that XFJ will resist this argument using the Charter. Macnamara didn’t have to resolve that issue, but the Supreme Court will have to. Perhaps the government will respond with Charter arguments about Melbournians’ rights. But, more likely, the government will just fight XFJ’s Charter claims tooth-and-nail. Charter s. 35 notices will have to be issued, meaning that the Attorney-General and VEOHRC will be invited to the party. Both of course will be there to provide neutral assistance, so maybe the Attorney-General will back XFJ? Anyone want to bet on that one?

Third, there’s the coming legislation.

The Charter in passing

After midday on 22nd February 2006, four or so months before the Charter was enacted, Peter Kokkios took a walk through Richmond’s public housing estate, not far from where I live. He was approached by a short skinny man and a tall fat one – that rules me out! – who asked him for a cigarette. When Kokkios said no, the next request was for his $1800(!) Tag Heuer watch, a request backed up by a syringe produced by the skinny guy. After taking a further $50 from Kokkios’s pocket, they ran off, with the taller one shouting ‘Come on Ant!’. Who was this ‘Ant’?

Mr Kokkios recalled that the skinny man had bloodshot and baggy eyes along with bad skin and bad breath. Mr Kokkis recalled that he was about 5 feet 10 inches tall and his hair, which was slicked or combed back, was black. He recalled that the skinny man looked European – Italian or Greek – was clean shaven, had brown eyes, a very long and skinny face and was approximately 20 to 25 years old. He recalled that he was wearing a red top and black ‘parachute’ tracksuit pants and a red T-shirt.

The next day, Kokkios identified Antonio Falcone from a photoboard. Falcone’s alibi wasn’t the best. He said that he went with his mum to the Commonwealth bank on nearby Bridge Road to get some money out, but left empty-handed when it turned out his account was in the red. A computer record showed that his discussion with the bank happened at 11.40AM. The disappointed pair went home. A couple of hours later, Falcone pawned some of Mrs Falcone’s jewelry. He denied having entered the housing estate that or wearing red or black clothing.

At Falcone’s trial for armed robbery, late last year, the deliberating jury had the following question for the trial judge:

If we find that we can place him at the scene, but believe he is not the man with the syringe, can we still find him guilty?

The jury’s question probably arose because of the account of Raglus, another possible eyewitness, who said he saw two men eyeing off a flash car near the housing estate close to midday. The witness also identified Falcone from a photoboard, but said that it was the other taller guy who was wearing red and black. After consulting both counsel, the trial judge responded:

If you find that the accused man wasn’t the one with the syringe, then you must have a reasonable doubt about the identification made by Mr Kokkios as identifying this accused man because he gives no description of Man No. 2 other than broader and bigger than Man No. 1. So if you were to reach this position then you must look at what’s left before you in the case and that’s the evidence of Scott Raglus and what you make of that, the evidence of Mr Trojan the man at the bank and what you make of that, the evidence of Mr Falcone and Detective Senior Constable Roberts and finally what the accused man had to say during his interview with the police. So that’s how I’m going to answer your question and I’ll otherwise ask you to return to the jury room and if there’s anything else that I can assist you with, please let me know

I’m not convinced that this is actually what the jury wanted to know. This account is directed to whether or not the evidence could support a finding that Falcone was the other man. But I suspect that what the jury really wanted to know was whether you could still be guilty of armed robbery even if you weren’t the one carrying the syringe. Because of the doctrine of ‘acting in concert’, the answer is, almost certainly, yes, as the trial judge had earlier directed them. Three days later, the jury convicted Falcone of armed robbery. In R v Falcone [2008] VSC 225, the Court of Appeal overturned Falcone’s conviction and ordered a new trial. The reason was that the Crown’s sole theory presented in the trial was that Falcone was the guy with the syringe. Australia’s common law doesn’t allow a new factual theory to be introduced without the defendant having a chance to respond. So, the trial judge should, instead, have answered ‘no’. 

This mundane, if somewhat depressing, procedural error yielded the following Charter remark from Vickery J, writing the judgment for the court:

The right to a fair trial is an essential safeguard of the liberty of the individual under the law. It finds expression in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 and is reinforced by s 24 of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic).

This is a ‘passing mention’. I complained about this practice back in February, during the (in hindsight) happy era when the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence was characterised by feel-good vagueness, rather than the misreadings and lousy analysis that soon rose to the fore. It is to be distinguished from both the outright sloppiness of approaches like Bongiorno’s and Lasry’s (amongst other reasons, because the Charter wasn’t applicable in Falcone’s case due to Charter s. 49(2)) and also the helpful approach of Neave and Warren (who mentioned the Charter to indicate what difference it may make in the future.) Rather, Vickery’s approach is similar to the dull jurisprudence of the ACT Supreme Court on its HRA, where the Charter is seen as, in some vague and unimportant way, restating the existing law. It’s worth recalling why this is a lousy practice.

A near miss for the Charter

Victoria’s landmark human rights statute almost got run down by a taxi today:

TRANSPORT Minister Lynne Kosky says an insane killer’s appeal to drive a taxi was one of her first briefs as transport minister. The minister announced a change in legislation this morning, after the Herald Sun revealed a tribunal decision to grant the man taxi accreditation, despite pleas from Victoria’s Director of Public Transport to ban him from the roads. A furious Ms Kosky slammed a loophole that allowed the killer to drive a cab because his acquittal was based on an insanity plea. “If this man was found guilty he would not be allowed to drive a cab, whether he had been rehabilitated or not,” Ms Kosky told 3AW radio. “If he had been found guilty of manslaughter he wouldn’t be able to drive a cab whether he had been rehabilitated or not. “Because he was found not guilty by reason of mental insanity he’s actually allowed.

You’ve got to hand it to those Hun copy writers. ‘Insane killer’ is a masterpiece of accuracy without precision. 

This is, of course, the case I covered three days ago. It’s rare for me to be ahead of the Hun. But, fortunately, the events didn’t fit the scenario I painted a couple of weeks back:

[T]he Charter will only come under threat if it becomes a political football – in other words, if something jolts the public from its present mood of indifference and ignorance.

That’s because Macnamara didn’t apply the Charter (or at least said he didn’t), though he certainly said that what he decided was compatible with the Charter, at least leaving open the possibility that alternative approaches wouldn’t be.

VCAT and Macnamara were the subject of the usual diatribes from the Hun’s readers (some of whom weirdly blamed Hulls too) and some not especially veiled criticism from Minister Kosky:

“I don’t want to comment on VCAT how they’ve made this decision. But I’m really disappointed because the intent of the legislation is very clear. “It is about making sure that customers feel safe when they’re in a cab.” Ms Kosky said she had worked tirelessly to clean up the taxi industry and was incredibly upset a decision was taken that may have jeopardised passenegers. “It is about the perception of safety in our cabs,” she said. “Cab drivers are often alone with individuals in the cabs. “People who drive cabs have a special responsibility and I’ve got a responsibility to give that certainty to the public that they can feel safe every time they pop into a cab.”

That’s a specific criticism of Macnamara’s interpretation of the word ‘comfort’ in s164 of the Transport Act. He didn’t use the interpretation mandate to reach that interpretation, but only because he felt it wasn’t necessary. (His view – correct, in mine – is that ‘comfort’ actually referred to upholstery and the like. No smelly taxi drivers!)

Kosky’s hasty announcement of legislation reforming the ‘loophole’ in the Transport Act that allowed XFJ to fully escape the scheme for limiting the registration of offenders seems like exactly the sort of ‘tabloid-to-statute-book’ legislation that is commonplace in NSW. Fortunately, it seems that the legislation has been long in the planning and, for that matter, it makes perfect sense to close this particular loophole (which caught people found insane after 1997 but not before.) But that change won’t keep XFJ out of the taxi drivers’ seat. It seems obvious that Macnamara would have applied this provision if necessary, which allows all killers, even the super-scary non-insane ones, to clean up drunken passengers’ vomit with VCAT’s permission:

169N(1) A person- (a) whose application for the issue or renewal of a driver accreditation is refused on a ground set out in section 169(2)(b) or (c); or (b) whose driver accreditation is cancelled under section 169E- may apply to VCAT for an order that the Director issue, renew or reinstate the driver accreditation (as the case may be).

(2) On an application under subsection (1) VCAT may by order direct the Director to- (a) issue a driver accreditation to the applicant; or (b) renew the driver accreditation of the applicant; or (c) reinstate the driver accreditation of the applicant.

(3) VCAT must not make an order under subsection (2) to issue, renew or reinstate an accreditation unless- (a) VCAT is satisfied of the matters set out in section 169(1)(b); and (b) the applicant has demonstrated that the issue, renewal or reinstatement is appropriate having regard to the public care objective.

Will Kosky be repealing 169N too? And will she be redefining ‘comfort’ in s164 to expressly include the feelings of taxi passengers (including prejudices against ‘insane killers’)?

The really  interesting question is: what statutory reforms would have been on the agenda if Macnamara had relied on the Charter for his interpretation of ‘conduct’, or for his view that the decision needed to be made in XFJ’s failure and without regard to the unfortunate prejudices of Melbournians?

The Supreme Court vs the Charter

Ever since Bongiorno J brought down his decision in Gray v DPP [2008] VSC 4, applying the Charter for the first time, I’ve been hanging out for the Supreme Court to consider the question again. Back then, I was deeply unimpressed with Bongiorno’s analysis. It appeared to ignore significant elements of the operative provisions of the Charter. In that respect, it was a sign of things to come. Not reading the Charter has been the hallmark of Charter cases this year.  To my surprise, the issue of bail did not speedily return to the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal. Newspaper reports revealed that Gray was applied in two later cases in the magistrates court. And then, nothing (published.) More recently, the VGSO seminar and an annual report revealed, with no apparent embarassment, that the magistrates courts simply stopped applying Gray. If true, that’s a surprising approach to precedent and sends a dire message about the significance of Charter precedents, even flawed ones.

Today, over ten months after Gray, the case has, at last, returned to the Supreme Court. In one respect, that’s an exciting development: the first time that the Supreme Court has been asked to apply an earlier Charter judgment setting out rights and an operative response. (The only other Charter judgment that’s been cited in the Supreme Court is R v Williams [2007] VSC 2, but that’s just an authority for not applying the Charter.) Alas, in other respects, Re Dickson [2008] VSC 516, is an appalling development, responding to Bongirono’s non-analysis of the Charter with some opposing non-analysis. The Victorian judiciary’s complete inability to do the slightest justice to a short, important statute is stunning, depressing and the entrenched norm.

George Dickson is, it seems, an even less appealing Charter rights claimant than the Charter’s first ever beneficiary, Kelly Gray:

Mr Dickson is charged with 25 counts of armed robbery and 4 counts of attempted armed robbery alleged to have been committed between August and November 2006. The offences apparently all involve armed robberies or attempted armed robberies on 24 hour convenience stores. These are serious offences involving a disguised offender using a knife. The offences involved the removal of, in some cases, tens of dollars and in other cases several hundreds of dollars. Mr Dickson has prior convictions for armed robbery in Victoria and Queensland….

On 3 April 2008 the applicant was sentenced in the County Court of Victoria for obtaining property by deception to 180 days’ imprisonment. On 23 April 2008, the parole on which he had been released in relation to earlier offences was cancelled. He has remained in custody and, as I understand it, has been serving pre-existing sentences and breached parole for a significant portion of the time since then. I am told that even if he were granted bail in this Court, he would not necessarily be released unless he was granted parole. It is by no means clear that would occur either.

But he has a number of things in his favour. First, he was charged on 20th March 2007, bringing him within the Charter’s stupid transitional provision. Second, the relevant bail provision at issue is the same one as was at issue in Gray (another alleged armed robber):

4(4) Where the accused person is charged-… (c) with an… offence in the course of committing which the accused person… is alleged to have used or threatened to use a firearm, offensive weapon, or explosive… the court shall refuse bail unless the accused person shows cause why his detention in custody is not justified…

Third, thanks to the Crown’s decision to lead extensive similar fact evidence at his trial (thus blowing out the expected length of the hearing to three months and requiring a rescheduling), he will spend a minimum of two years and three months in prison awaiting his trial. Indeed, he has already spent a year-and-a-half, engaging the second and third limbs of this interesting right:

21(5) A person who is arrested or detained on a criminal charge- (a) must be promptly brought before a court; and (b) has the right to be brought to trial without unreasonable delay; and (c) must be released if paragraph (a) or (b) is not complied with.

Justice Lex Lasry had this to say about the question of whether or not the ‘delay’ was ‘unreasonable’:

The phrase “unreasonable delay” is not otherwise defined and nor would one expect to be. It must be regarded as descriptive given the particular circumstances. The section also appears to imply that for a delay to be “unreasonable” it would have occurred for reasons not attributable to the fault of the applicant. It was submitted on behalf of the applicant in this case that a total delay of two years and three months is unreasonable. That would be a difficult proposition to reject.

Who knows why the section ‘appears to imply’ that the delay musn’t be attributable to the applicant? Does it say that somewhere? But, anyway, it’s accepted that, in this case, the delay is attributable to the Crown (in belatedly seeking to adduce reams of similar fact evidence) and, perhaps, the County Court, which is notoriously suffering considerable delays. Anyway, Lasry’s finding that 21(5)(b) is satisfied is unequivocal. So, that means that Dickson has the right ‘to be released’. Right?

But, suddenly, Lasry decides to stop reading the Charter and instead goes about the task of distinguish Gray. Not, mind you, on the basis that Gray ignores the Charter’s operative provisions, but rather becuse the facts are different:

It is not submitted on behalf of the applicant before me that he will spend more time in custody than he is likely to serve upon a sentence particularly bearing in mind that his present custody involves revoked parole and is not simply pre-sentence detention. In Gray his Honour further concluded that the applicant was not a flight risk and there was little tangible evidence to suggest that the applicant would interfere with witnesses. Ultimately, his Honour concluded that the applicant had established that his continued incarceration was not justified and he was released on bail. What his Honour’s ruling demonstrates is that the Charter has a significant role to play in emphasising the importance of particular rights, but when it comes to the right to be brought to trial without unreasonable delay, that right remains to be considered within the appropriate or relevant provisions of the Bail Act.  I note at this point that in my opinion the circumstances confronting his Honour in Gray are quite different from those before me. First, in this case given the particular circumstances a significant amount of the applicant’s time in custody might not be reckoned as pre-sentence detention. Second, given Mr Dickson’s mental condition and its apparent connection with his offending, there is a risk that he might commit further offences if he were released. It is put by Mr Atkinson that there is also a risk of interference with witnesses although Mr Atkinson accepts that such a risk is more circumstantial than actual.

These are, indeed, all important differences. But they don’t change the fact that the terms of Charter s. 21(5) are engaged, including Charter s. 21(5)(c), one of the few uneqivocal rights to a remedy that appear in the Charter. Gray, by contrast, didn’t engage Charter s. 21(5)(c), as he had not, at the point of his Supreme Court application, been delayed too long. Instead, the only right he had engaged at that point was Charter s. 25(2)(c), which contains no remedy provision.

So, instead, the question is one of operative provisions. Here’s the argument made by Dickson’s counsel;

Mr Traczyk submitted on behalf of the applicant that the enactment of the Charter has brought about a significant change in the law in Victoria. Prior to the enactment of the Charter, it was submitted, there was no legal right to a speedy trial in Victoria. Mr Traczyk however submitted that s 21(5) of the Charter has clearly created a legal right to be brought to trial without unreasonable delay. It was further submitted that the Charter requires that the provisions of the Bail Act must be interpreted in such a way as to give full effect to this right. Indeed it was initially submitted, on behalf of the applicant, that where a person has been held in custody for a period of time which a court determines is unreasonable, that person should be released on bail, regardless of any other circumstances.

Now, that’s a far from perfect argument, as it appears to treat Charter rights as operative on their own and fails to note the caveats to the interpretation mandate. But, on the other hand, it clearly identifies the relevant operational provision being relied upon. Later, Traczyk makes a less extreme submission:

Mr Traczyk further submitted that even where an unacceptable risk has been shown, the overriding question in determining whether an individual should be released on bail in cases where delay is cited as exceptional circumstances or good cause is whether release on bail is required to give full effect to that individual’s right to be brought to trial without unreasonable delay.

That doesn’t seem to bad an argument. Moreover, Traczyk had a plan to manage any risk posed by Dickson:

It was submitted by Mr Traczyk that if I were inclined to release Mr Dickson on bail I could impose a condition in general terms that he not be released unless and until he was granted parole and that if that occurred, that within 48 hours of release, he report to the North Western Mental Hospital and from then on obey the lawful directions given to him at that institution. Mr Traczyk provided to the Court, on the applicant’s behalf, a letter addressed to the solicitors for the applicant and signed by Ms Elizabeth M. Williams, Psychiatric Nurse at North Western Mental Health. The letter, which is dated 21 November 2008, indicates that should Mr Dickson be granted bail, the clinic at Northern Hospital can offer a Case Management Intake Assessment to the applicant on Friday, 28 November 2008.

A potentially neat case-specific solution to s4(2)(d)’s ban on releasing people who pose an ‘unacceptable risk’. Indeed, there also seems to be an equal protection argument based on Dickson’s diagnosis of schizophrenia, which Lasry was concerned wouldn’t be effectively treated in jail. 

So, isn’t it time, at long last, for a Supreme Court judge to give serious consideration to the meaning and effect of Charter s. 32(1) Alas, no:

I cannot conclude that the Charter requires that the Bail Act be interpreted to allow for an accused to be released on bail, regardless of an established unacceptable risk, whether it be a risk of flight, re-offending, interference with witnesses or otherwise. Section 1(2) of the Charter provides, in relevant part: The main purpose of this Charter is to protect and promote human rights by— (a) setting out the human rights that Parliament specifically seeks to protect and promote; and (b) ensuring that all statutory provisions, whenever enacted, are interpreted so far as is possible in a way that is compatible with human rights; …  Section 1(2)(b) of the Charter requires that other statutory provisions be interpreted “so far as is possible” compatibly with human rights. The provisions of the Bail Act contain no reference to delay or to a right to a speedy trial. In this particular case, the Bail Act requires me to refuse bail unless the applicant shows cause why his detention in custody is not justified.

Charter s. 1???? What freaking planet is Lasry from? That’s the Charter’s purpose provision. It doesn’t have any operative effect. Here’s what the relevant operative provision says:

32(1) So far as it is possible to do so consistently with their purpose, all statutory provisions must be interpreted in a way that is compatible with human rights. (2) International law and the judgments of domestic, foreign and international courts and tribunals relevant to a human right may be considered in interpreting a statutory provision.

Now, granted, it so happens that Charter ss. 1(2)(b) and 32(1) are in pretty much the same terms. But whereas the former is an aspiration, the latter is a legal command. There’s a ‘must’. There’s also a clear reference to relevant comparative law. And there’s also a requirement that any interpretation be consistent with a provision’s purpose. Relying on Charter s. 1 is the kind of thing a (poor) undergraduate student (or Mirko Bagaric) would do.

Now, it’s clear that Lasry thought that the suggested interpretation went beyond what was ‘possible’ under the Bail Act, something Bongiorno failed to consider. Good for him.

But: (1) Lasry doesn’t explain why the Bail Act can’t possibly be interpreted in that way. What words stand in the way? And why? Overseas judgments have made it clear that the natural or settled meaning of words is no barrier. Some go so far as saying that the words themselves are no barrier. Lasry seems to see things otherwise. But why? (2) While, I certainly think it’s arguable that s4(2)(d), which bars bail for people who are an ‘unacceptable risk’, is pretty hard to get around, it’s less clear that the wording of s4(4)(c) is similarly unmalleable, so surely Lasry had to consider whether or not those words needed to be re-interpreted to permit release in a case of unreasonable delay? (3) Lasry neglects any consideration of the purpose of the Bail Act too, which might be a more sound reason to reject the argument put by Gray. (4) Also, if Lasry is right that the Bail Act ‘cannot be interpreted consistently with human rights’ then shouldn’t Lasry be mulling over the need for a declaration of inconsistent interpretation, which would of course require both notice and a consideration of Charter s. 7(2)? (5) I know this doesn’t seem to have been argued, but isn’t there also a conduct mandate issue too, in relation to the OPP and, perhaps, the County Court’s registry?This argument would face some hefty Charter s. 38(2) & 39(1) hurdles, of course, but the remedy of habeus corpus could be apt. (The fact that Dickson was confined on other charges would, of course, seem to be a barrier to them.) Alternatively, there’s the remedy of a stay, which seems to be the (controversial) Canadian approach.

[EDIT: And, (6) When I think about it, the specific reason for Dickson's delayed trial - the Crown's apparently belated decision to lead lots of similar fact evidence and the County Court's willingness to adjourn to accomodate that - seems to carry lots of opportunities for a remedy for Dickson, although it may be too late now. Wouldn't a better response have been to tell the Crown that if it wanted to move the trial date, it'd have to accept the bail of Dickson?]

Eh, why even bother listing all these things? They all assume that judges have even the slighest interest in what the Charter actually says.

The Charter vs taxi passengers

October 31st is the date I pronounced the biggest Charter day EVER, given the thrilling combination of two passing mentions in the Court of Appeal and the revelation on Stateline of the (then) most significant Charter challenge to date. Now, thanks to the slow drip feed of cases onto Austlii, I’ve discovered that that Halloween was even bigger still.

XFJ v Director of Public Transport [2008] VCAT 2303 ponders this question:

[W]ould you want to ride with a man who stabbed his wife to death in 1990, never mind the circumstances? Would you want one of your children to ride in those circumstances?

If not, then you might want to skip catching taxis in Melbourne.

As diligent readers of this blog know, the Charter has already been raised by an insurance fraudster wanting to ride a bus, in the face of the Transport Act 1983’s licensing scheme. Peter Swain’s insurance fraud was a ‘category two’ offence, meaning that there was a presumption against him ever having a public transport licence. But serious violent offenders face a much tougher burden:

169(2) The Director must not issue or renew a driver accreditation if the Director is aware that the applicant-… (b) has been found guilty of a category 1 offence…

VCAT can allow such persons, including murderers, to drive, although perhaps it’d take a brave VCAT member to do so. XFJ, though, managed to slip out of the regime for managing the licensing of criminals altogether, despite these uncontested facts:

XFJ came to Australia in 1989 as a refugee from the upheavals in Ethiopia. He left Ethiopia, travelling through Sudan to Egypt. He says he suffered many hardships in the course of his flight from Ethiopia, including imprisonment and torture in Egypt. In 1990, XFJ, who is now aged 52 years, was in the grip of a serious depressive episode. He was contemplating suicide. Apparently he carried a piece of rope around with him. In the event however, the violent action which he took first was not directed against himself, but against his estranged wife. He killed her with repeated knife blows. Thereafter, he attempted to commit suicide himself by hanging, but the attempt failed when the limb on the tree which he sought to hang himself from broke.

XFJ’s jury found him not guilty of murder on the ground of insanity. He was detained at the Governor’s pleasure and eventually released into the community in 1998 and from all constraints in 2003. The Transport Act has a provision deeming such persons to be offenders for the purpose of the licensing scheme, leading the Director of Public Transport to initially deny him a licence. However, a closer inspection of the provision revealed that it didn’t cover people like XFJ who were dealt with under the pre-1997 insanity regime. Instead, XFJ’s application for a taxi licence had to be dealt with just like most people’s:

169(1) …[T]he Director may grant the application if the Director is satisfied- (a) that the issuing of accreditation is appropriate having regard to the public care objective; and (b) that the applicant- (i) is technically competent and sufficiently fit and healthy to be able to provide the service; and (ii) is suitable in other respects to provide the service; and (c) that the applicant has complied with the application requirements under this Division.

In June this year, safely on the right side of Charter s. 49(3) ,the then Director, Jim Betts, made his decision: to refuse XFJ’s application, citing the public care objective and XFJ’s suitability ‘in other respects’ and, thus, dashing XFJ’s hopes for a flexible job to assist him in caring for his 19-month old, who alas has leukemia.

Appealing to VCAT as his last hope, XFJ raised the Charter. VCAT Deputy President (and Charter virgin) Michael Macnamara dealt with the Charter argument as follows:

I should note that Mr Stanton, on behalf of XFJ, impressed me with a number of arguments arising under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. It has not been denied that, having regard to the timing relative to the present proceeding, that the Charter applies. Again, without rehearsing the arguments which were put by Mr Stanton, and the counterarguments put by Ms McKenzie, it is sufficient, so far as the Charter is concerned, for me to note that Section 32(1) of the Charter Act provides:

(1) So far as it is possible to do so, consistently with their purpose, all statutory provisions must be interpreted in a way that is compatible with human rights.
(2) International law and the judgments of domestic, foreign and international courts and tribunals relevant to human rights may be considered in interpreting a statutory provision.

In my view, the approach which I am about to take, relative to the Transport Act 1983, is in accordance with those provisions, and no issue arises of any inconsistency between the Transport Act and the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. Hence, even although issues relative to the Charter have been raised and argued before me, it is, as far as I can see, unnecessary for me to consider giving notice to, or inviting argument from, either the Attorney General or the Human Rights Commission.

Hey, no fair! I want to hear what those impressive Charter arguments (and counterarguments) are.

The Charter vs Parliament

One of the core principles of the Charter is that it doesn’t affect Parliament’s powers. Those powers are preserved by the limited nature of the Charter’s operative provisions (limited to interpretation, and excluding the non-administrative capacities of parliament from the oblgiations mandate.) They are also made clear in three express savings provisions:

29 A failure to comply with section 28 in relation to any Bill that becomes an Act does not affect the validity, operation or enforcement of that Act or of any other statutory provision.

32(3) This section does not affect the validity of- (a) an Act or provision of an Act that is incompatible with a human right; or (b) a subordinate instrument or provision of a subordinate instrument that is incompatible with a human right and is empowered to be so by the Act under which it is made.

36(5) A declaration of inconsistent interpretation does not- (a) affect in any way the validity, operation or enforcement of the statutory provision in respect of which the declaration was made; or (b) create in any person any legal right or give rise to any civil cause of action.

But could the Charter still be raised in court in an action against Parliament?

Petra Butler recently gave a talk at Melbourne Law School about just such an action in New Zealand. The recently booted-out Labour government caused a lot of controversy by passing a new Electoral Finance Act late last year. (See the pictured front-page editorial in the NZ Herald, featuring a gagged man, which was later the subject of a successful press council complaint.) An article in the latest issue of the Public Law Review outlines a number of concerns about the statute, notably its quite extreme limits on third-party advertising. Indeed, incoming PM Key has earlier announced that repealing the Act will be his first move upon his election. For NZBoRA groupies, a further controversy is how the NZ Attorney-General Michael Cullen fulfilled the following obligation under the NZBoRA:

7 Where any Bill is introduced into the House of Representatives, the Attorney-General shall,— (a) In the case of a Government Bill, on the introduction of that Bill; or (b) In any other case, as soon as practicable after the introduction of the Bill,— bring to the attention of the House of Representatives any provision in the Bill that appears to be inconsistent with any of the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights.

Cullent didn’t report. In accordance with the usual (and excellent) NZ practice, the legal advice he received on the issue is published, complete with the names of the advising lawyers: Val Sim, Crown Counsel and (a name now familiar to Charter groupies) Joanna Davidson, as peer reviewer. The advice described the freedom of expression views as ‘finely balanced’ but deferred to Parliament’s ‘wide margin of appreciation’. Andrew Geddis, in the PLR, casts this ‘vet’ as ‘overly deferential to the government’s policy preferences’. 

Somewhat astonishingly, an action was commenced in New Zealand’s High Court seeking a declaration that the Attorney-General was in breach of s7 of NZBoRA. The action was commenced before the Bill was passed, but the High Court declined the request for urgency. By the time the action was heard, the Bill had passed, but declarations were sought on the basis that a declaration should be made about the past breach and that s7 required the Attorney-General to recommend the re-introduction of the bill accompanied by an appropriate s7 statement. The Attorney-General responded with a request to strike out the application as an interference with parliament and as an attempt to seek an unavailable declaration remedy on a moot point. In Boscawen v Attorney-General [2008] NZHC 949, a judge of the High Court agreed to the striking out. Denis Clifford’s key finding was that:

when the Attorney-General responds to his duty under s 7 of NZBORA and determines ­ as the case may be ­ that there are or there are not inconsistencies between a bill and the rights and freedoms contained in NZBORA, and therefore determines whether to draw or not draw such inconsistencies to the attention of the House, the Attorney-General performs a function which falls within the proceedings of Parliament. I think, therefore, that questions of the privilege, whether described in terms of non-interference in the internal proceedings of Parliament, or as questions of Article 9 [of the Bill of Rights 1689] privilege …  mean that judicial review is not available.

According to Butler, the striking out has been appealed to the NZCA, but it would be quite a surprise if it reaches a different conclusion.

The general principles cited in Boscawen are also part of Victorian law. So, would they apply to the equivalent provision of the Charter?:

28(1) A member of Parliament who proposes to introduce a Bill into a House of Parliament must cause a statement of compatibility to be prepared in respect of that Bill.

(2) A member of Parliament who introduces a Bill into a House of Parliament, or another member acting on his or her behalf, must cause the statement of compatibility prepared under subsection (1) to be laid before the House of Parliament into which the Bill is introduced before giving his or her second reading speech on the Bill.

(3) A statement of compatibility must state- (a) whether, in the member’s opinion, the Bill is compatible with human rights and, if so, how it is compatible; and (b) if, in the member’s opinion, any part of the Bill is incompatible with human rights, the nature and extent of the incompatibility.

As is well known, Charter s. 28 differs from NZBoRA s7. In NZ, statements must only be made if the A-G thinks a bill is incompatible. By contrast, the Charter requires a statement for every bill. This strikes me as a potentially significant difference, because the making of a statement, as opposed to its content, is not a question of legal judgment about the human rights content of a bill.

The rights of the woman without a face

The Age today caught Melbournians up with a crime mystery that’s been circulating for a year now. It concerns an alleged  serial killer, linked to dozens of crimes, big and small, by her DNA. Sometimes called the “Phantom of Heilbronn”, the Age uses her other nickname:

On New Year’s Day in 2003 at Dietzenbach, near Frankfurt, an office was broken into and a coffee tin of loose change stolen. “It was a professional job,” said Guenter Horn, another high-profile prosecutor liaising with police. “She left no fingerprints. But she did leave a scraping of skin, and that was enough to pin the job on (the Woman Without a Face).” In all there have been 30 break-ins and hold-ups that have yielded her DNA identity, in addition to the murders.

On May 2005, in the city of Worms, a local gypsy turned a gun on his brother. Police later found the phantom’s DNA on one of the bullets. Police went on television in April 2005 with an appeal to the public for tips, but to no avail. Then came the killing of officer Michele Kiesewetter. She and a colleague who has never been named were assigned to an undercover drugs squad in Heilbronn when at least two people climbed into the back of the car and shot them both in the head at point-blank range. Ms Kiesewetter died instantly, her partner lingered on in a coma for months, before the bullet lodged behind his right eye was removed. He remembers nothing of the incident. Nothing was taken from them save their handcuffs. Chief Superintendent Horst Haug of Special Commission Parkplatz said: “It was brutal, apparently random and with no apparent motive. What are we dealing with here? And who is the accomplice?”

Police revealed that other DNA traces were found at crime scenes indicating she sometimes operated in tandem with another. But no two crime scenes yielded the same DNA, indicating she picks up and discards helpers with the same casual abandon with which she kills. Kurt Kletzer, a noted Viennese psychiatrist, says the Woman Without a Face is “intriguing and disturbing” in equal measure.

To me, the case has an intriguing and disturbing resemblance to a hypothetical I once raised with a Victorian Parliamentary Committee on 2003, back in my earlier incarnation as a researcher on mass DNA screenings. As it happens, Germany is the world’s leader in ginormous mass DNA screenings, some literally of 100,000 and many in the tens of thousands. Soko Parkplatz is a relatively small one, with only a couple of thousand samples taken from Germany women to date. The thousands of samples are either from Germany’s DNA database of convicted offenders or a so-called voluntary mass screening of some other usual suspects. But that screening assumes that the Woman Without a Face is a criminal! The real woman may be a lot closer than the Germany police seem to think.

Right before I testified, a representative from Victoria Police was asked what he thought of the idea of creating a database of police DNA for elimination purposes. DI Cowlishaw of Victoria Police’ DNA implementation unit said:

The database has been set up for the purpose of finding out who has committed crimes and putting criminals on it. Police officers have very strict rules as to who they can get a DNA sample from. What a lot of police officers say, and have objection to, is that they have committed no offence themselves, apart from being a police officer, and they have been asked to go on a database, where people who have committed crimes such as thefts, theft of motor cars and those sorts of offences, which by community standards are considered to be serious offences, do not have to go on a database. A lot of them object on those grounds.

These are, of course, all claims that would now been framed in terms of the Charter. Indeed, the government has taken a broad and enlightened view of the scope of all sorts of criminal process rights, but only when they apply to police officers. Cowlishaw went on to make a dubious claim that Victoria’s current legislation doesn’t even permit police officers (as opposed to ‘third party volunteers’) from being asked for their DNA.

So, rights vary depending on whether the volunteer is a second party or a third party. But which party is the woman without a face?

The right not to be hurt

A tiny Supreme Court judgment from a month back has appeared on Austlii. Daniels v Bayside Health [2008] VSC 472 involves an unrepresented man who is convinced that his son’s health and, possibly, his life is in danger from treatment he is receiving as an involuntary patient under the Mental Health Act 1986 at Thomas Embling Hospital. Bernard Daniels has been told be Dr Yolanda Lucire, a Sydney doctor, that his son Garth has been misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic and instead has had a variety of other conditions for the last ten years. Her opinion is that the treatment Garth is receiving, valium and zuclopenthixol, is likely to cause harm to him, in particular to his muscles. The treating doctors acknowledge that the medicine has its risks, but dispute the doctor’s diagnosis of a complicating condition called neuroleptic malignant syndrome.

Daniels senior lodged a review with the Mental Health Review Board but turned up at the Supreme Court because he wanted the medication stopped prior to that review. The Mental Health Act requires that all patients (and, presumably, as appropriate, their guardians) be told their rights. Recent new regulations specify that involuntary patients be told of their Charter rights in these terms:

The Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 seeks to promote and protect certain human rights. The Charter defines the protected rights and requires public mental health services to act compatibly with these rights. The Charter also specifies when and how rights can be limited by law. For example, under the Mental Health Act 1986 you may be detained in a mental health service if it is necessary to protect your health or safety or the safety of others. However, any restrictions on your liberty and any interference with your rights, privacy, dignity and self-respect must be kept to the minimum necessary in the circumstances. If you have any questions about the Charter or how it might affect your treatment, contact one of the organisations described at the end of this statement.

This does a nice, if inevitably inadequate job, of explaining the nuances of the Charter. It doesn’t, for example, address the complex issue of whether the Charter places some fundamental new limits on treatment, notably when the treatment is a threat to someone’s health, as Lucire alleges in this case. The statement directs patients wanting more information to VEOHRC. It’d be interesting to know what they’d say in this circumstance.

Daniels senior raised the Charter in these terms:

In the course of his argument, Mr Daniels has raised a large number of matters, many of which are not really matters which I need or can determine at this stage. He raised questions of procedural fairness, the entitlement of his son not to suffer torture under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities 2006, the entitlement of his son not to suffer death or to be at risk of death under the Charter.

Not a bad effort. Daniels has obviously read Charter ss. 9 and 10. The difficulty for him, alas, was that, testifying by phone before the Supreme COurt, Lucire didn’t support the claims of threats to Garth’s life or that there was an intermediate risk, e.g. to his heart muscles. 

Daniels’s reference to procedural fairness – it’s not clear what fairness issues were at stake – was presumably to Charter s. 24. At the Protecting Human Rights conference, I observed that the Attorney-General, intervening in a Mental Health Review Board matter, was described in the judgment as submitting that the right to a fair hearing doesn’t apply to mental health matters. However, Joanna Davidson, in the audience, publicly and firmly objected to my ‘mischaracterisation’, insisting that the issue only arose in passing and that she only canvassed the law briefly. Her vehemence carried the clear implication, before an audience with considerable interest in this matter, that the Attorney-General would never take such a miserly stance. That very public exchange would be quite a relief to many stakeholders in mental health, including Daniels. 

Justice David Byrne treated the matter with appropriate flexibility, deeming it to be an application for an interim injunction for a variation to Garth’s treatment order (even though no application was actually filed.) However, the application was dismissed:

In the circumstances and given the limited area of my concern in this type of application, I find myself not satisfied that the current medication is so dangerous as to warrant the intervention of the court, assuming that the court has the power to intervene in such a case. Accordingly, the application for interim injunctive relief must fail.

While Bryne’s stance is understandable, I’m not convinced that the test applied is appropriate in light of the Charter. While it’s clear that findings weren’t open about breaches of Garth’s rights to life and against degrading treatment, I think that things are a little different given a further Charter right:

Positive obligations under the Charter

Amidst all the excitement here in Victoria, I’ve been neglecting overseas developments. Two cases this week are interesting in the light they shed on the positive obligations in the Charter. At the Protecting Human Rights Conference, I called for the repeal of some nineteen sections of the Charter, including the definitions section. The latter call was a touch painful, because although nearly all the definitions in Charter s. 3 are bad, there is one important but neglected one:

3(1) In this Charter-… act includes a failure to act and a proposal to act

The only Charter provision that uses the word ‘act’ (in its non-statute sense) is the conduct mandate:

38(1) Subject to this section, it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way that is incompatible with a human right or, in making a decision, to fail to give proper consideration to a relevant human right.

This section accordingly sometimes make it unlawful for a public authority to do nothing. I suspect, though, that even without Charter s. 3, the conduct mandate would oblige the government to act in certain situations. The extent of those obligations is quite interesting.

In one case being argued this week before the United States Supreme Court, the issue concerns the obligations of governments to promote free expression by weird-sounding religious groups. One such groups of oddballs, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, likes to donate massive stone monuments of the Ten Commandments for display in public parks. One of its monuments has been duly displayed in a public park in Pleasant Grove, Utah for the last thirty-eight years. The plaintiffs before the Supreme Court are another group of oddballs, Summum, who want the agency running the public park to accept their donated stone monument containing these Seven Aphorisms:

1. SUMMUM is MIND, thought; the universe is a mental creation.
2. As above, so below; as below, so above.
3. Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.
4. Everything is dual; everything has an opposing point; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes bond; all truths are but partial truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.
5. Everything flows out and in; everything has its season; all things rise and fall; the pendulum swing expresses itself in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.
6. Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is just a name for Law not recognized; there are many fields of causation, but nothing escapes the Law of Destiny.
7. Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; Gender manifests on all levels.

According to Summum, these are the real message Moses wanted to bring down from Mt Sinai. He was all ready to do so when he noticed the Golden Calf, raced back up the mountain and came back with a dumbed-down translation in the form of the decalogue of depressing and turgidly expressed ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ on the Eagles’ monument. Kinda like the difference between the Consultation Committee’s draft of the Charter and the version that got enacted after the meddlers did their bit. Summum’s case is that the Pleasant Grove City Council is obliged, if it is going to continue to display the Eagles’ version, to also display Summum’s, lest it commit the sin (and First Amendment infringement) of content-based regulation of public speech. The Council’s response is that the Eagles’s monument isn’t public speech, but rather government speech, which can reflect the government’s views. That’s a pretty dicey argument to make in the US, where the government is barred from establishing a religion. Not so scary here for the Victorian government. The appeal is from a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Sunnum’s favour.

The other case, In Re E (a child) [2008] UKHL 66, decided today by the House of Lords, concerns the limits to the government’s obligation to protect people from things that they have a right against, specifically the European equivalent to this Charter right:

10 A person must not be-… (b) treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading way

The case concerned a horrific Belfast saga back in 2001, where loyalists in a North Belfast neighbourhood targetted Catholic children walking to and from school down Ardoyne Road, which passes through a Protestant estate in a predominantly Catholic area. There was no challenge to the police’s initial step of banning kids from the road altogether. Rather, the case concerned their longer term strategy:

When the new term commenced in September the police had been able to consider what strategy they would follow and what expedients they might adopt. A decision was made by them that their overriding priority was to do everything possible to enable the parents to take their children to school on foot along Ardoyne Road…. The expedient adopted was to station police and military vehicles along both sides of the road, creating a corridor through which the group of children and parents could walk. Police and soldiers were deployed on the protesters’ side and escorting police officers carrying long shields accompanied the group to protect them from missiles. This tactic proved successful, to the extent that no injuries were sustained by any children.

It was argued and accepted that this tactic, while protecting the kids’ lives, still exposed them to degrading treatment. At issue was whether the police should have done more to protect the kids, by barring the protesters from Ardoyne Road altogether.

Flugge’s challenge

Boy, it’s suddenly gotten busy. Two challenges to SSOMA . One to MC(IP)A. Bell’s hearing next week on mental health. A taste of Victoria’s glorious Chartered future. But those are pending matters. Decided matters still drip through and make little splash. Today, the Victorian Supreme Court issued judgment in Trevor Flugge’s Charter challenge, Re AWB Limited [2008] VSC 473. Flugge won, but the Charter point wasn’t considered.

Flugge’s case and its demise follows directly from these conclusions of the Cole report into the Australian Wheat Boad’s role in the Oil-for-Food scandal:

I]n my view:

• Mr Flugge might have been either reckless, or intentionally dishonest, and might have failed to exercise his powers or discharge his duties either in good faith in the best interests of AWB or for a proper purpose and therefore might have committed an offence against s 184(1) of the Corporations Act 2001
  
• Mr Flugge might have dishonestly used his position and been reckless as to whether the use of his position may have resulted in Iraq or an Iraqi entity directly or indirectly gaining an advantage and therefore might have committed an offence against s 184(2) of the Corporations Act 2001
  
• Mr Flugge might have failed to exercise his powers and discharge his duties in the best interests of AWB and for a proper purpose and therefore might have contravened s 181 of the Corporations Act 2001
  
• Mr Flugge might have failed to exercise his powers and discharge his duties with the degree of care and diligence that a reasonable person would exercise if they were a director of a corporation in AWB’s circumstances and occupied the office held by, and had the same responsibilities within the corporation, as Mr Flugge and therefore might have contravened s 180 of the Corporations Act 2001.

It is a serious matter for an officer of a public corporation such as AWB to authorise the corporation to enter into agreements in breach of statutory duties that the officer owes to the corporation, particularly where the officer acts intentionally, dishonestly or recklessly in breach of those duties.

I recommend that this matter be referred to the Task Force for consideration of whether proceedings under sections 180, 181 and 184 of the Corporations Act 2001 be instituted against Mr Flugge.

I note that section 1317K of the Corporations Act 2001 imposes a six year limitation period for the commencement of proceedings arising from contraventions of civil penalty provisions. Accordingly, the referral to ASIC should only be in relation to the conduct of Mr Flugge that occurred from 2001 onwards

The key nuance is that Cole’s findings supported both ‘civil penalty’ proceedings (which can attract disqualification and ‘pecuniary penalties’) and criminal proceedings (which can attract fines and prison.) While the concept of a civil penalty proceedings was initially conceived as an alternative to criminal prosecution, the scheme was eventually changed to allow criminal proceedings to go ahead even though civil proceedings were in place or had concluded. The reverse couldn’t occur, unless the civil proceeding failed.

In the case of Flugge and four other directors against whom Cole recommended both civil and criminal proceedings, ASIC said that it would do the civil proceedings first, because of the civil statute of limitations. (By coincidence, one of the relevant contracts commenced on 20th December 2001, meaning that the six year cut-off was 19th December 2007. If Coghlan’s ridiculous decision in BAE Systems Australia is correct, then that starting-point, weeks before the Charter’s full commencement, would have barred the Charter from the case. That’s a point wasn’t resolved here.)

What was argued was that the serial procedings were unfair to the defendants, mainly because they would have to choose between revealing their defences (including possibly testifying) in the civil proceedings (which will feed handy information for the criminal prosecutions) or not doing so, possibly harming their civil defence. There is a provision barring the use of evidence adduced by the defendant in civil proceedings in the later criminal ones. But, like the other Charter case involving overlapping proceedings – Bongiorno’s concern about the coercive questioning regime operating in parallel with a criminal prosecution – the bar doesn’t extend to ‘derivative’ information.

Flugge et al argued that the civil proceedings ought to be stayed until the criminal matters are resolved. This would, of course, solve ASIC’s statute of limitations problem, but ASIC nevertheless resisted the stay. The question of whether or not a stay should be granted turned on a 1982 case, McMahon v Gould, which set out an ‘interests of justice’ test that gave priority to the right of ‘plaintiffs’ to pursue whatever actions they want. But later authorities suggested that the balance should shift in favour of a stay, in particular because of the potential for defendants in civil proceedings to have to testify (or otherwise defend themselves), thus undermining their right to silence in a later criminal matters. The Charter was thrown into this mess of precedents as follows:

More on the sex offenders’ challenge

I happened to be in the legal precinct today and dropped by to listen in at the sex offenders’ challenge in the Court of Appeal. Pamela Tate was speaking (presumably for the Secretary, rather than with her ‘neutral’ hat on intevening for the Attorney-General. At least, that’s sure how it sounded.) There were nine barristers there (presumably three each for the two fiends – I spotted Kris Walker. Some VEOHRC staff were there, but it didn’t look like the commission was intervening. [EDIT: Nope, they are intervening, and will speak after the S-G. So, maybe I'm wrong and the A-G was intervening too? It'd be handy if they could colour-code those wigs of theirs.] There was no talk of a declaration, so I assume none of the required Charter s. 36(3) notices are out on that one.  

It’s dangerous to try to sense the mood when you only watch part of a case – as the mood can be the opposite when the other side speaks – but the case didn’t seem to be going at all well for Tate, with Maxwell and Weinberg both hammering into her. Nettle was quieter and even helped her out every now and then.

Anyway, some tidbits I picked up:

• A comity of errors: One issue (possibly the only one) is the interpretation of ‘likely’ in s11 of the SSOMA. It certainly does seem to be in the cards that the CoA will overrule Callaway in TSM (despite only being a three-judge bench.) Indeed, both sides seemed to disagree with Callaway, with Tate describing his judgment as somewhat confused (which it is.) Hilariously, Tate’s argument is that Victoria should follow the present approach of the NSW Court of Appeal. Regular readers will recall that the NSWCA reached that interpretation reluctantly out of comity with Callaway in TSM! To sustain her argument, Tate had to claim that the NSWCA’s actually misinterpreted Callaway and somehow stumbled onto the right answer.  It’s hard to see how this sort of error can be persuasive, especially when the NSWCA clearly said that, but for comity, it wouldn’t have followed TSM at all but rather would have adopted a stricter standard (which, presumably, Tate thinks is the wrong standard.) Tate, trying to get away from Tilman, relied instead on the follow-up case, Cornwall. Readers will recall that Cornwall was the first bloke the NSWCA refused to detain, ruling that there was no ‘high degree of probability that he was likely’ to re-offend and that electronic supervision would do. He had his bracelet off and melted away within 30 minutes. Surprising that the Victorian government thinks that that’s the perfect test. I guess that Tate will argue that, although the NSWCA stated the correct test in Cornwall, they nevertheless misapplied it to the facts. 

• A non-’trivial’ bar: Tate’s big pitch was that, whatever the test is, it shouldn’t be quantitative. That’s because she knew that the court would then go for the ‘more likely than not’ standard that the NSWCA would have backed were it not for TSM, which would certainly narrow the SSOMA scheme. Not that she said that; rather, she argued (1) it would go against the legislature’s choice to use the word ‘likely’, which she claimed (to Weinberg’s incredulity) wasn’t quantitative. Maxwell kept point out that all that was clear is that the test isn’t normative (e.g. a Briginshaw-like standard that re-adjusted itself according to what issues were at stake.) Tate very reluctantly agreed with that. 2) It would encourage over-reliance on statistical expert evidence. Weinberg’s response was that the best way to stop statistical evidence is to stop asking for it and listening to it. Maxwell was concerned that trial judges need an intelligible standard. He could hardly keep a straight face when Tate suggested that defining ‘likely’ to mean ‘a sufficiently substantial risk’ would provide the required certainty (and wouldn’t be ‘normative’.)  The judges then mooted the idea that the bar should be high indeed, given how extraordinary ESOs are. Tate firmly stated that the bar should not be ‘trivial’. That’s quite a concession. She then embarked on some stats to show that of the 150 eligible offenders released last year, the Secretary only called for reports on 34 and only sought orders on 10. Of those tenm seven were granted and the other three were… pending. Weinberg asked whether that meant that none had been refused. ‘Um’ retorted the S-G, until Weinberg pointed out the math. Tate countered with more stats, which suggested that of 40 court applications to date, ’several were withdrawn’, one was reversed on appeal and one was rejected. A high bar indeed. Attrition stats are always tricky in a discretionary system aren’t they?

• A non-criminal process for locking up criminals: ‘So, you’d better address Charter s 7(2) then’, said Maxwell. Uh, there’s an intervening step, said Tate: have any rights been limited? That is indeed true, but why she wanted to embark down that road is beyond me. But embark she did, passionately arguing that Charter ss. 25(c), 26 and 27 didn’t apply because of Fardon, the High Court’s umpteenth refusal to apply Kable. Maxwell was a bit dubious about the relevance of Chapter 3 to the meaning of ‘punish’, but Tate pressed Gummow’s  ’normative scheme’ approach. According to Gummow, ESOs are nothing at all like criminal sentencing, because ESOs are simply triggered by guilt but are imposed for other reasons. As opposed to sentencing, which… um…. anyway. Tate also mentioned a UK case that Maxwell snorted was about non-contact orders, not supervision. Somehow, the model litigant didn’t see fit to talk about Belcher, where the NZCA held that almost identical legislation was punishment for the purposes of NZBoRA’s criminal process rights. I guess that’s in the written arguments. But why wouldn’t she be responding to what her opponents said on that? I hope they know about it! Weinberg raised the fact that SSOMA says that proceedings are criminal. Tate said that was not-determinative but just a starting point and was just a mechanism to ensure that the Secretary had the same obligations as a prosecutor. Weinberg was confused: does the Secretary usually have less obligations than a prosecutor? Nettle chimed in with something about having to call adverse witnesses. Maxwell suggested that, if the proceedings are criminal, then maybe contested facts need to be proven beyond reasonable doubt? Tate said she was sur that the test was balance of probabilities. But you’ve gotta wonder if that will be true in 2010 when s141 of the Evidence Act 2008 kicks in.

• ESOs and helicopter mums: Tate did concede that ESOs limited one right: freedom of movement. (It’s not clear whether or not the fiends raised any others. Self-incrim, alas, didn’t get a look-in.) So, it’s time for 7(2). Tate started by saying that you need to look closely at the nature of the right. Weinberg said: movement’s pretty important isn’t it? It’s essential to liberty. Tate argued that, at international law, ESOs don’t engage the right to liberty at all. Maxwell asked her to say that again so that no-one misunderstands it. Ouch. She valiantly insisted that ESOs could be likened to mum and dad telling the kids to phone then when they get to their destination. Weinberg pointed out that, regardless, movement was high on the scale in 7(2)(a). Tate sounded unhappy about that. I wonder what’s high on her scale? Life, I guess. What I don’t get here is that all the arguments were about the mandatory bits of the ESO scheme. But an ESO also exposes you to the discretion of the Adult Parole Board, which can order stuff like mandatory medical treatment, having to ‘reside’ at Ararat Prison, who you can associate with, whether you can use the net, etc. There are plenty of rights limitations there. The Board, of course, isn’t bound by the Charter. So why don’t ESOs engage all those rights? It’s not clear that that’s what the sex offenders are arguing, though. Strange.

And that was it for the day. They’re at it again tomorrow, but I’ll skip it.

Again, caution is necessary, but Tate seemed to know that she’s going to ‘lose’ at least 2-1, in the sense that the judges are going to toughen up the TSL threshold to ‘more likely than not’, at least and cite the Charter as the reason. I can’t help but think that Tate is just going through the motions now and planning a High Court appeal, where the judges who were in the majority in Fardon will presumably be more sympathetic to her take on things.

More on Bongiorno’s challenge

Further to this previous post, I’ve belatedly noticed that the Charter issue relating to the coercive questioning powers in the Major Crimes (Investigative Powers) Act 2004 is discussed in the Annual Report of the Special Investigations Monitor (SIM). Here’s the discussion:

During one application for a CPO in the period under review, His Honour Justice Bongiorno raised the possible conflict between s. 25(2)(k) of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (the Charter) and s. 39 of the MCIP Act. The application concerned a person who was already charged by police for the offences the subject of the application for the coercive powers order. His Honour expressed concern that Victoria Police sought to summon that person to attend for examination and therefore be compelled to testify against himself/herself or to confess guilt contrary to s. 25(2)(k) of the Charter. Accordingly, His Honour sought written submissions on the matter and adjourned the application for the coercive powers order until resolution of the potential conflict.

Subsequent to this application for a CPO before Justice Bongiorno, a further two applications for a CPO and an application for an extension of a current CPO were made before His Honour Justice Cummins. The two applications for a CPO were adjourned on the grounds that the same issue as that raised by Justice Bongiorno applied. In respect of the application for an extension of a current CPO, His Honour Justice Cummins imposed a condition in the following terms:

“Any person who has been charged with any offence linked to the organised crime offence – the subject of the CPO – will not be summoned to give evidence (at an examination) until resolution of the issue with respect to s. 25(2)(k) of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006.”

The Chief Examiner has advised the SIM that on the instructions of the Chief Commissioner of Police, written submissions, to which the Solicitor General has contributed, have now been compiled by the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office and submitted to His Honour Justice Bongiorno for consideration. Important issues are involved which are yet to be determined by the Supreme Court.

This fits what I previously discussed. It’d be great to see those written submissions. I’ve never entirely understood why these things aren’t published somewhere. How likely is it that the Solicitor-General’s arguments are going to be full of confidential information? 

What is of particular interest is the news that Cummins J imposed a condition on an existing CPO barring its use in relation to charged defendants. Previously, I couldn’t see how a potential breach of the Charter required that this step was taken. But I hadn’t noticed this provision of the Major Crimes (Investigative Powers) Act 2004:

8 The Supreme Court may make a coercive powers order if satisfied- (a) that there are reasonable grounds for the suspicion founding the application for the order; and (b) that it is in the public interest to make the order, having regard to- (i) the nature and gravity of the alleged organised crime offence in respect of which the order is sought; and (ii) the impact of the use of coercive powers on the rights of members of the community.

It could be argued that the interpretation mandate now requires that s8(b)(ii) be interpreted to require the Supreme Court to refuse an order (or impose conditions on it) if to do otherwise would be to authorise a breach of Charter rights. On the other hand, though, there’s a question of whether or not this interpretation is tenable, given the balancing test between crime-control and due-process envisaged by s8(b) and the apparent purpose of the legislature to strike such a balance. Presumably, this issue could be resolved by some close attention to Charter s. 7(2).

Interestingly, the same SIM report discusses a court judgment, CR v Attorney-General [2007] VSC 263, about the limits of the Supreme Court’s power to impose conditions on a CPO:

9(1) A coercive powers order must state that the Supreme Court is satisfied of the matters referred to in section 8(a) and (b) having regard to the matters referred to in section 8(b)(i) and (ii).

(2) A coercive powers order must also specify-… (g) any conditions on the use of coercive powers under the order.

Some cheeky judges started imposing a condition that any witness summons be made by the court (rather than by an alternative provision allowing the Chief Examiner to make the summons.) The Chief Ex challenged this as overriding the legislation’s permission for him to do exactly that. But the court held that the rights component of s8(b) allows courts to override the legislation in that way:

The sex offenders’ challenge

My guess last post was right. (Of course, presumably the whole legal community knew this, but not me.) It’s on!:

Two convicted sex offenders are invoking Victoria’s human rights charter to appeal against being given an extended supervision order in what is a legal first.

One of the applicants is a child sex offender jailed for more than 10 years for his crimes. The man, whose name is suppressed, was convicted for sex crimes against his teenage daughter, another teenage girl and his adult partner. He was given a 10-year extended supervision order when he finished his jail term after a County Court judge found a “high degree of probability” he was likely to further offend. However, his lawyer Graham Thomas SC told a Court of Appeal hearing today his client was not a high-risk child sex offender and therefore not eligible to to be subject to the order.

Mr Thomas also said the sentencing judge had indicated she did not believe the man was suitable for an order but later changed her position. But counsel representing the secretary to the Department of Justice, David Grace QC, said the man’s crimes were premeditated and opportunistic. Mr Grace said the sentencing judge included in her reasons the fact the man had shown a lack of insight into his behaviour by denying his wrongdoing. He said the man jumped bail on the day he was due to attend his court hearing on his application for an extended supervision order and had refused to take part in a sex offenders program, despite being offered many times. Mr Grace said the man continued to “thumb his nose up at authority” and suggested he tried to create relationships with females with children while he was in jail so he could groom them for sexual offending.

The second sex offender is appealing an eight-year extended supervision order imposed on him by the County Court on the basis it is too long. The man, whose name is also suppressed, was jailed for more than a year for indecent assault and will also use the charter to argue his case.

Victoria became the first Australian state to implement a Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities on January 1 and it is the first time it will be considered by Victoria’s appeal court. The hearing before Justices Geoffrey Nettle, President Chris Maxwell and Mark Weinberg continues tomorrow.

Um, it’s actually the sixth time the Charter will be ‘considered’ by Victoria’s appeal court. The appeal court cited the Charter once in 2006 and four times again this year, including in its appalling Underbelly decision. Here’s hoping, though, that this will be the first time the Court actually does the Charter justice, in analysis if not in the final result. Interestingly, all three judges in this hearing are Charter virgins. The case, argued today, is listed for a second day of argument tomorrow. [EDIT: And here's the Hun's take. The tabloid refers to the offenders as 'sex fiends' (fair enough, I guess) and, as is the norm, gives more details of the legal argument than the Age.]

But what is being argued? The article is tantalisingly vague. I can see three types of rights arguments could be made about extended supervision orders (ESOs):

The hidden dialogue on parole

Last April, SARC, reporting on the Justice Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 (which extended the ESO scheme), wrote to the Corrections Minister asking about the exemption (given the broad rights-limiting powers the Adult Parole Board can exercise) and received these responses a month later:

5. Why is the Adult Parole Board exempted from the obligation to act compatibly with human rights and to consider relevant human rights when making decisions under s16(2)? The Government decided to make the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities (Public Authorities) (Interim) Regulations 2007 to exempt the APB and the Youth Parole Board from the Charter for a period of a year in order to allow the review of the impact of the Charter on these bodies’ work; and to consider the resources that would be required to ensure their compliance with the Charter.

6. Will the exemption in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities (Public Authorities) (Interim) Regulations 2007 be renewed in 2009? The work referred to above is still underway and a decision will be made before the regulations expire on 31 December 2008.

Not exactly chatty, hey?  I’ve complained previously in this blog (and elsewhere) about the silent ‘human rights dialogue’ – more correctly a ‘no human rights dialogue’ – that led to the exemption of Victoria’s three parole boards from the Charter’s obligations mandate late last year. One of the few negative comments in VEOHRC’s report card on the Charter was to make a similar complaint. The only significant public comment on this exemption is Hulls’s response to a parliamentary committee in June this year, comments that led me to wonder whether the parole boards’ concerns were based on some shonky comparative legal analysis.

I had, though, been hoping that the recently tabled Annual Report of the Adult Parole Board would be illuminating on these matters. Other reports by public authorities typically include some proud detail on how they are working to comply with the Charter. But, now that the report is available online, the only mention of the Charter is in the opening ‘message’ by Chairperson Justice Simon Whelan. (Murray Kellam, it turns out, quit in September 2007, before the exemption was enacted. Kellam was part of the court in the Court of Appeal’s human rights lowpoint to date, its Underbelly judgment. But Whelan, like most of the judges, has also had his chance to give short shrift to the Charter this year. Interestingly, his contribution was to tell off another public authority, the Registrar of Titles, for trying to comply with its obligations mandate in a dispute between two companies.)

Anyway, here’s what Whelan had to say about the Charter and parole:

The Board is currently exempt from compliance with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. The Board’s view is that this exemption, which presently expires at the end of this calendar year, was a prudent and responsible step taken by the government. There are, in the Board’s view, compelling reasons for the exemption. The Department of Justice is currently reviewing the issue and the Board is working with officers of the Department in that review. The Board is confident that there will be a satisfactory outcome which will ensure that important features of the Board’s practices are preserved.

Oops. He forgot to add ‘and ensure that Parliament’s objective of promoting all human rights, including those of prisoners, parolees, victims and other stake-holders in the parole systemn, are met’ a the end there. But I’m sure that’s implicit. Alas, also left implicit and mysterious are the reasons why the exemption was ‘prudent and responsible’ (responsible?) and what those ‘compelling reasons’ are.

Charter of frights

Marlin: I promised I’d never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That’s a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.

Australian Policy Online’s new webazine, Inside Story, has a piece by me on the Charter, covering similar ground to my October conference paper, but with lots more on poor old Justice Cosgrove and coverage of more recent Charter developments. (Subscribe to their e-mail newsletter to potentially win a $250 book voucher from Readings!)

The title of my article – an obvious pun but not all that prevalent – probably won’t endear me to the human rights lobby. But, as those who actually listened to my conference speech would well know, there are two sorts of frights I’m referring to: fear of the Charter, and fear of that very fear. it’s the latter that I think bedevils Victoria’s Charter and has led to some unfortunate gaps in its drafting and operation. Funny how some folk think that that’s an anti-Charter argument, or even an anti-human-rights one. The movement in favour of human rights charters is, I think, a lot bigger than the Charter and those who drafted it and are involved in its implementation. The latter group need to let their baby grow up. The above Finding Nemo quote about an overprotective father didn’t make the cut at Inside Story. It’s tricky, in human rights essays, to avoid an ending that is either too smug or too glib.

Transition in Indonesia

Indonesia enacted its human rights law in 2000 and its constitutional court began operation in 2003. Its very first decision was to declare unconstitutional the retrospective application of Indoensia’s anti-terror laws to the Bali bombings. More recently, it issued a ten-year moratorium on the death penalty. And, today, the Bali bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, who were convicted under Indonesia’s anti-terror laws, were executed for their crimes. It’s a case study of how transitional issues can cause a human rights law to go awry. Such issues, in a much less extreme form, also bedevil Victoria’s Charter.

SIx days after the Bali bombings, Indonesian President Megawati Sukanoputri issued an emergency decree setting out new terrorism offences. The Indonesian Legislative Assembly confirmed that law, as well as a further emergecy decree stating that the terrorism offences could be used against the Bali bombers. Various Bali bombers were soon convicted and sentenced to death. All of them raised constitutional objections to their trial and convictions based on this provision of the Indonesia’s Bill of Rights:

Art 28I(1) The rights to life, to remain free from torture, to freedom of thought and conscience, to adhere to a religion, the right not to be enslaved, to be treated as an individual before the law, and the right not to be prosecuted on the basis of retroactive legislation, are fundamental human rights that shall not be curtailed under any circumstance

This provision is clearly relevant to the Bali Bombers, who were convicted under a law passed six days after the bombings and whose life is very much at stake.

Article 28I(1) covers the ground of a number of  Charter rights, including:

9 Every person has the right to life and has the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life.

27(1) A person must not be found guilty of a criminal offence because of conduct that was not a criminal offence when it was engaged in.

(4) Nothing in this section affects the trial or punishment of any person for any act or omission which was a criminal offence under international law at the time it was done or omitted to be done.

The omission of an equivalent to Charter s. 27(4) in Indonesia is controversial, given the repeated claims of human rights abuses by former regimes. The Bali court trying the bombers all rejected the bombers constitutional arguments, on the basis that the bombings were offences against international law and that in any case they should be limited in accordance with an Indonesian Constitutional provisions concerned with respecting the rights of others, which could be regarded as roughly similar to Charter s. 7(2).

However, when a lesser participant in the bombings – Maskyur Abdul Kadir – took his conviction for pariticpating in the bombings to the Constitutional Court in 2004, the Court, in a 5-4 decision, construed Art 28I(1) according to its literal terms and declare Indonesia’s terrorism law unconstitutional in relation to its retrospective effect, including to the Bali bombings. Since 2004, all prosecutions in relation to the Bali bombings have since been conducted under the existing Criminal Code, covering offences like murder and using explosives (which still carry the death penalty.) There would seem to be no cogent objection to retrying the people already convicted – including  Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra – under those laws.

So far, so straightforward. But then things get weird. And deadly.

Napping in the High Court

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten [law]–
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door–
Only this, and nothing more.”

Actually, it was Judge Dodd’s aides loudly dropping those law booksto wake him up during a deadly dull drug trial.  On Thursday, the High Court added another short volume. At last, we are blessed with the reasons for judgment in  Cesan v The Queen; Mas Rivadavia v The Queen [2008] HCA 52. The problem of sleeping judges raises two great questions and one silly one:

First, how can you tell if a judge is asleep? Recently, Refshauge J of the ACT Supreme Court had to determine whether he had nodded off during a deeply-dull-sounding matter about tracing improperly transferred Commonwealth funds. Allan Endresz, one of the matter’s twenty-nine defendants, having heard about the High Court allowing Cesan’s appeal, started claiming that Refshauge was occassionally driftig off during the triall. The judge told Endresz that his argument would be stronger if he pointed it out when it happened. Andresz didn’t quite comply, with his next allegation and the alleged nap being separated by a lunch break. However, matters came to a head when Edresz produced one of his employees who had been sitting in the gallery with a notebook. TTime pressures meant that Refshauge himself had to rule on whether he had been asleep at the times noted, which he noticed was as silly (and common) as a judge ruling on whether she or he was biased. He resolved the issue by considering the evidence: that no-one noticed any snoring; that Endresz’s main evidence (a fake objection to test the judge’s wakefulness that received a slow response) was inconclusive; that other counsel disagreed with Endresz’s observations; that Refshauge didn’t recall being asleep; that his notes showed no signs of ’squiggles’; and that the tape recording of the incident was both familiar to him and appeared to catch him coughing. Mystery solved. Refshauge ruled that he had his eyes shut to concentrate and would be cautious about his demeanour in future.

The factualy mystery was less happily resolved in Ceasan’s case. Although the defendants raised Judge Dodd’s snoozes with their counsel, he advised them that they were better off with Dodd than 85% of the NSW judiciary. (French CJ concluded that this wasn’t a reference to the judciary’s sleepiness, but rather their pro-prosecution bias. What a relief!) But they did offer a slew of affidavits from themselves and their supporters on appeal. Conveniently for them, the majority of the NSWCCA (presumably part of the 85%) were so certain that sleepiness was no injustice that they glibly accepted the evidence that Dodd was napping and the ensuring circumstances (presumably assisted by medical evidence about Dodd.) So, facts weren’t the problem in the High Court.

Second, is a sleeping judge a miscarriage of justice? This is the question the NSWCCA came a cropper on, with the majority holding that the judge’s mere physical presence (unaccompanied by actual consciousness) was enough, at least if the judge wasn’t required to make any legal rulings while napping. The High Court overruled that, but on two quite different grounds. The majority focused exclusively on evidence that the jury was distracted by the judge’s napping. Cesan’s sister said:

During the times when the judge was asleep for long periods I noticed that many of the jurors appeared not to be paying attention to what was being said and would appear restless. They would fidget, look at each other, watch the judge, look around, appear to be scribbling and generally appeared to lose concentration. This was very different to how the jury reacted when the judge was awake. At those times they would appear to be paying attention, generally looking at whoever was speaking or at their papers when asked. It was very obvious to me that there was a real difference in the jury’s behaviour when the judge was asleep.

Others testified that jurors joked, and jurors and officials slept while Dodd nodded. The majority held that such conduct was at odds with a proper trial. Trial judges had better be careful not to trigger a wave of yawns in future trials.

The new Chief Justice Robert French took a bolder view, holding that the jury’s conduct was mere evidence of a deeper problem causeed by the judge’s behaviour:

If, by reason of sleep episodes or serious inattention, the reality or the appearance exists that a trial judge has substantially failed to discharge his or her duty of supervision and control of the trial process in a trial by jury, then enough has been made out to establish a miscarriage of justice. 

The problem, French held, is the appearance of justice. Without that appearance, there might be miscarriage of justice. Refshauge better keep his eyes wide open in futere.

French held that the absence of complaint by counsel wasn’t determinative, given the amount of sleep proven and the evidence of jury distraction:

The question whether there has been the reality or appearance of a substantial failure by the judge to perform his or her duty will require assessment of a number of factors including: 1. Whether the conduct of the judge can be said to have affected the outcome of the trial. 2. Whether the conduct of the judge has created a risk that the outcome of the trial may have been affected. 3. Whether counsel raised the question of the trial judge’s conduct at the trial. 4. Whether the jury appeared to have noticed or to have been distracted or otherwise affected by the judge’s conduct.

Alas,  the other four Howard appointees and Gummow didn’ even mention French’s approach. Interesting politics, there. Perhaps they couldn’t stomach the fact that French cited a European Court of Human Rights judgment on the right to a fair hearing for his ‘appearance of justice approach.’ More likely, they were probably pissed off that French spent much of his judgment defining the term ‘miscarriage of justice’, contrary to the Gleeson court’s approach to interpreting appeal statutes, where century-old terms have been belatedly deemed undefinable and definitions are regarded as inappropriate and irrelevant judicial glosses. 

And, now, the silly question: should the defendants get a new trial?

The right to information

I’ve complained before about the shoddy standards of Victorian courts when it comes to giving the public useful access to their judgments. Whereas all other mainland jurisdictions in Australia place all higher and intermediate court judgments (and quite a few lower courts ones) on their own websites or Austlii, only the Supreme Court of Victoria and VCAT (plus a couple of minor entities) give their decisions to Austlii. A new NSW practice note seeks to formalise the removal of judgments from Austlii when their contents might prejudice a trial. Assuming you buy into the whole ’suppression order’ dogma (regardless of effectiveness or proprotionality), that makes sense in theory. In practice, it just means that various judgments vanish in arbitrary ways, often indefintely. For example, despite Joseph Thomas’s trial ending some weeks back, nearly all the various judgments in his case (from Cummins J’s appalling admissibility ruling in 2005 to Curtain J’s appalling sentencing judgment more recently) are still not available on Austlii.

I raise this because of a particular mystery about VCAT decisions. I recently covered the interesting Charter/Disability Act decision, LM [2008] VCAT 2084. The day of my post, the judgment vanished from Austlii and is yet to re-appear. Who knows why? Maybe there’s a concern about LM’s privacy, but it is surely important for Charter applications to be on the record. As someone who’s spent years trying to prise case files out of courts, I’m well versed (in that narrow field) with bureaucrats’ tendency to keep information to themselves whenever they can (and to use that control over information to deflect attempts to establish any right to get it.) The dawn of FOI legislation (albeit never applicable to courts) has changed the courts’ rhetoric from ‘mine!’ to ‘we are protecting litigants’ privacy!’, but their conduct is identical. Will the dawn of the Charter make any difference?

In a three-week old VCAT decision that mysteriously materialised on Austlii this week, McDermott v Victoria Police (General) [2008] VCAT 2183 – read it quick before it vanishes! – the applicant, trying to prise documents out of Victoria Police’s Ethical Standards Branch and the Office of Police Integrity about a rejected complaint he made to them, tried out a vague Charter argument to convince VCAT to override some FOI exemptions:

In his reply to counsel for the respondent, counsel for the applicant also submitted that the public interest override should be invoked because the process of sampling was unfair, the Charter of Human Rights had not been observed, the process was one-sided and his client was hampered in his case by being placed at a severe forensic disadvantage by his inability to have all the file available for the benefit of cross-examination of the police witnesses.

VCAT Senior Member Noreen Megay didn’t resolve what the Charter argument was all about:

In counsel’s reply he referred in passing to the obligations imposed by the Charter of Human Rights but this was not a matter articulated during the running of the hearing. Certainly it was referred to, again in passing, in a preliminary argument about the subpoena issued by the Tribunal at the request of the applicant and was dealt with in the preliminary ruling.

Meh. Another inarticulate attempt to raise the Charter, without (it seems) any attempt to identify either operative provisions or rights that are engaged. (Charter s. 49(2) shouldn’t be a problem. The incident complained of and the complaint itself occured in 2006, but the complaint, and the ensuing FOI application, were lodged in 2007. Charter s. 49(3), though, might bite to the extent that McDermott was relying on the conduct mandate as it applies to Victoria Police, who failed to make a timely decision in November 2007 and ulitimately reached its conclusion in December 2007.)

So, what operational provisions were at issue? Probably both the interpretation and conduct mandates. The relevant provision of the FOI Act is this one:

50(4) On the hearing of an application for review the Tribunal shall have, in addition to any other power, the same powers as an agency or a Minister in respect of a request, including power to decide that access should be granted to an exempt document (not being a document referred to in section 28, section 29A, section 31(3), or in section 33) where the Tribunal is of opinion that the public interest requires that access to the document should be granted under this Act.

This section’s foundation is the fact that, often, government agencies have a choice on whether or not to release information. Public authorities must now make that choice in accordance with the Charter’s conduct mandate:

38(1) Subject to this section, it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way that is incompatible with a human right or, in making a decision, to fail to give proper consideration to a relevant human right.

If not granting access would limit someone’s Charter rights, then access must be granted (subject to the Charter s. 38(2) defence, which presumably would apply in the case of some exempt documents.) Section 50(4) of the FOI Act has been interpreted as only permitting VCAT to make such a decision on an agency’s behalf if the public interest ‘necessitates’ it. But, if the conduct mandate requires entities to grant access, then perhaps s50(4)’s concept of ‘public interest’ should be interpeted as encompassing that very circumtance? (This would be subject to such an intepretation being consistent with s50(4)’s purpose. I’m no FOI wonk, so I have no idea.) On one reading of s50(4), VCAT is standing in place of the original decision-maker ‘the same powers as an agency’ (which include duties, like Charter s. 38(1)), so arguably VCAT is bound to order release under s50(4) if the agency should have released.

But all of that is by-the-by unless there is a right being limited.

The right to bite

Friday’s other Charter case – or, more exactly, other passing mention of a possible future application of the Charter by a dissenting Court of Appeal judge – was a criminal appeal, R v De Simone [2008] VSCA 216.

In 2004, businessman, property developer and walking criminal law exam problem Giuseppe de Simone was shopping for groceries at the Coles in Barkly Sqaure, Brunswick. Alas, his shopping, while otherwise routine, included opening a four-pack box of ice-creams and eating one of them, an event observed by two store employees. When de Simone fronted at the check-out, the box was nowhere to be seen and he made no mention of it. After he was challenged, he claimed to have forgotten about it and offered to pay for a whole box and keep only three of the ice-creams. The store manager would have none of that, insisting that he pay for the whole box and keep none of them.

After that promising start, things went downhill. Voices were raised. The store manager tried to stop de Simone from leaving. A secutity guard intervened and the police were called, responding to a claim that someone was being ‘aggressive’. When the two cops arrived, an argument erupted and all three ended up on the ground. It was at that point that de Simone bit Constable Baynes on the forearm. De Simone later insisted that he was being suffocated and needed to bite the officer to breathe. The incident quickly led to the use of handcuffs, capscium spray and the issuing of charges of theft, intentionally causing injury and assaulting a police officer. 

Alas for my law students, the interesting theft charge was dropped. Although de Simone was convicted of the other charges and fined $6000, the Court of Appeal unanimously allowed his appeal on the grounds that the trial judge fluffed his response to a jury request to read the transcript of evidence of eyewitnesses to the events before the bite. They generously entered an acquittal, on the ground that a new trial would be ‘a scandalous waste of public money’, though Mark Weinberg JA chastised de Simone as foolish and pointed out that his actions were costly for both himself and the community. Oh, that wasted unfinished box of ice-creams! (It seems that de Simone has a habit of getting into these sorts of tangles.)

The Charter issue arose in relation to a further question (which wasn’t necessary to decide) about the legality of the police’s actions. Except in special circumstances, police cannot use force to arrest someone without first telling them that they are under arrest and the reasons for that arrest. De Simone testified that the police didn’t tell him he was under arrest, but rather just leapt on him while he was loudly asking to see a lawyer. Several independent witnesses didn’t hear the arresting words either. But the police insisted they went by the book. Justice Neave discussed the possibility that the police said the words but de Simone didn’t hear them, noting that there was a line of authority that suggested that the lawfulness of an arrest depends on what the police said, not what the arrestee heard. Believe it or not, one UK precedent involved the arrest of a deaf man who couldn’t lip-read. Neave footnoted that precedent (and the more routine scenario of an arrestee who can’t speak English) with the following comment:

Query whether this conclusion could be challenged under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006.

Like Warren CJ in the other Charter case brought down that day, Neave unfortunately didn’t state which right she had in mind.

The Charter vs Ministerial rezoning

Last Friday was arguably the biggest Charter day ever. Not only did news emerge of a significant new Charter challenge (actually the second Charter challenge in the news that week), but there were also two Charter cases in a single day, both in the Court of Appeal. I wonder if days like Firday will be routine a few years from now? Not that the cases were too exciting.  Both of them were mere passing mentions of the Charter. Indeed, both were made by dissenting judges. And both cases were within the scope of Charter s. 49(2), the Charter’s overbroad transitional provision.

Nevertheless, the two cases strike me as a positive sign (and not just because I happen to think that the dissenting judges happened to be right.) The passing mentions were not mere footnotes trivialising the Charter, but instead deliberate attempts by two judges to draw attention to possible Charter issues, even if they weren’t live in the case before them. I think this is a terrific development, and a wholly appropriate approach to ‘applying’ the Charter in cases where the Charter unfortunately doesn’t apply. Given the other barriers to raising the Charter, it’s important for lawyers and others to be made aware of potential uses of the Charter in the future. Indeed, such references might be the start of a dialogue that occurs in advance of more formal Charter litigation, like declarations of inconsistent interpretation. As it happens, both involved a common rights issue, the right to notice, albeit in very different contexts.

East Melbourne Group Inc v Minister for Planning & Anor [2008] VSCA 217 is a planning case, involving Ministerial overrides, a topic that resonates strongly with people like me who lived in Queenland during the Russ Hinze years. In this case, a residents’ group in a well preserved and well heeled Melbourne inner suburb challenged a plan by the local iconic Hilton hotel (across the road from the MCG) to build a new 15 story tower. The plan was fast-tracked by Minister Mary Delahunty, who sidelined the usual planning processes in 2005, citing the then upcoming Commonwealth Games. It was the latter citation that caused her decision to come a cropper in the Court of Appeal, who held that it failed administrative law’s ‘Wednesbury’ unreasonableness standard, because there was no possibility of the tower being built in time for the games. I’ve got to say that I think there’s a lot to be said for the dissent of Chief Justice Marilyn Warren, who held that Minister was thinking of Hilton’s promise to refurbish the existing tower (and its implicit threat to withdraw its brand from the icon) if the planning approval wasn’t speedily approved. I would have thought the odds were good of a sucessful High Court appeal, but I’m no administrative lawyer.

Warren’s Charter point was made in relation to the section of Victoria’s Planning & Environment Act 1987, which allows the Minister to ditch the usual procedure for making amendments to a plan (supply of copies, public availability and specific notice):

20(4)The Minister may exempt himself or herself from any of the requirements of sections 17, 18 and 19 and the regulations in respect of an amendment which the Minister prepares, if the Minister considers that compliance with any of those requirements is not warranted or that the interests of Victoria or any part of Victoria make such an exemption appropriate.

Warren commented:

Some additional observations may be made regarding the interpretation of s 20(4), although the ultimate determination of this case is not based on them. First, the relevant test for s 20(4) is set out in the section itself. It requires that ‘the Minister considers that compliance with [the notice] requirements is not warranted or that the interests of Victoria or any part of Victoria make such an exemption appropriate.’ These terms are disjunctive. The use of the word ‘or’ indicates that the Minister need only consider that either compliance with the notice requirements is not warranted or that the interests of Victoria, or any part of it, make exemption from the notice requirements appropriate. Nevertheless, it is unnecessary to determine the point for present purposes. Indeed, it was not argued at the trial or in the appeal. Moreover, and although it did not arise in this case, consideration may be required in future of the ramifications of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) to the application of s 20(4) of the Act.

Warren (unfotunately) didn’t identify which Charter rights she had in mind.