Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Hansard source

I commend everyone who was involved in the committee process that looked into this legislation. As I stated very emphatically in the additional comments I provided in the committee report, I strongly support the intention underlying the Crimes Amendment (Strengthening the Criminal Justice Response to Sexual Violence) Bill 2024.

One of the disturbing things, to be frank, about this process was that the committee received very strong submissions from one of Australia's leading experts in relation to criminal law, Professor Jeremy Gans, with respect to the initial draft of the bill that was introduced to parliament. I note that, following Professor Gans's submissions and submissions by the Law Council of Australia—both Professor Gans and the Law Council of Australia had provided their submissions, and, at the time of the preparation of the report of the committee, the issues raised by Professor Gans and the Law Council of Australia had not been satisfactorily resolved in responses by the Attorney-General's Department in a timely fashion to enable the committee to reflect on those responses and whether or not those responses adequately addressed the material issues raised by Professor Gans. The committee was left in a position where, in the report of the committee in paragraph 2.142, it said:

The committee received evidence that demonstrated that the proposal to increase limitations on the admissibility of evidence related to sexual experience could have adverse effects on federal sexual violence proceedings.

That was one of the paragraphs contained in the report of the committee and one of the observations made by the committee. From my perspective, these are very serious matters. The fact that we received such strong testimony and evidence from leaders in the field that the initial draft of the bill did not satisfactorily deal with the interplay of very complicated provisions in the criminal law raised considerable doubts as to the technical efficacy of the bill. I'd like to ask you, Minister, whether or not the government is satisfied and can provide comfort to the Senate that those technical issues from the government's perspective have now been satisfactorily resolved.