EVIDENCE (IDENTIFICATION) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 3 May 2011.)

The Hon. M. PARNELL (21:54): When this bill was first placed on the Notice Paper, nobody would have imagined that the topic of police line-ups, police photo parades and the identification of alleged wrongdoers would have been the water-cooler conversation in Parliament House, a hot topic on talkback radio and of general interest to the community.

In fact, the very day of the media reporting around the collapse of the assault case against the Hon. Kevin Foley, I had a senior city corporate lawyer tell me that a similar thing happened to him. He was trying to identify the person who had broken into a neighbour's house and he picked the wrong person from the photo board. Identification is often a difficult matter. It is also often fundamentally critical to the successful prosecution of a criminal trial. What that means is that we want identification evidence to be as reliable as possible. Where there are doubts about the reliability of the evidence, we want judges and juries to attach appropriate weight to that evidence. If it is unreliable, it should be rejected in its entirety. These are the issues that are covered by this bill.

I would like to say at this stage that I appreciated the information session that was organised by the Attorney-General, involving Professor Neil Brewer from Flinders University, a specialist in eye witness identification and a person who has conducted a significant amount of research into this area. We also heard at the briefing from Mr Michael O'Connell, the Commissioner for Victims' Rights, and a representative from SAPOL. The Greens support the second reading of this bill, but we will reserve our position on the final passage of the bill until we have completed the committee stage.

The Law Society has expressed some concerns, and it has expressed a preference for the codification of certain legislative safeguards along the lines of the relevant commonwealth legislation. That approach has some merit, but we would like to hear the government's response before finalising the Greens' position. I also understand that the shadow attorney-general has a major contribution to make. With those brief remarks, the Greens are pleased to support the second reading of this bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.