David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

The amendment at the end, subsection (8), which sets out that ‘a failure to comply with any of the provisions does not affect the validity of a summons’, answers the question. It is still open for a defendant or prospective defendant, as the case may be, to raise the threshold issue and explore the reasons, but a failure to comply with the provisions of (1A) after the passing of the bill will not render the summons ineffective or invalid—in other words vitiate it—by that failure, so that the provisions wherein a person is entitled to explore the legal veracity of the various instruments are there, but a failure to comply, in this instance, will not invalidate the summons.