Suppression Orders

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:14): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Deputy Premier and Attorney-General a question about suppression orders.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: Media outlets have reported over the past few days that notorious convicted child murderer and suspected serial killer Bevan Spencer von Einem is close to death. His conviction in 1984 for the abduction, imprisonment, torture and murder of 15-year-old Adelaide teenager Richard Kelvin rightfully earned him life behind bars. That tragedy represented just one of the colloquially termed 'family murders', a series of unsolved sadistic murders of young men and teenagers in Adelaide in the seventies and eighties.

Von Einem was ordered to stand trial over the two murders—those of 18-year-old Mark Langley and 16-year-old Alan Barnes—charges that were later dropped. According to criminologist Associate Professor Xanthé Mallett, at least five boys and young men are thought to have been potentially tortured and murdered by von Einem and his group. Police and detectives have long believed he was not acting alone, yet to this day he remains the only person ever convicted in association with those murders. This is despite authorities recommencing DNA testing in 2008. Meanwhile, the names and identities of other suspects have been subject to suppression orders since. In the case of those suppression orders, they remain in place only in South Australia.

My question to the Attorney and Deputy Premier is: four decades on from von Einem's conviction, noting the unlikelihood of a deathbed confession, will the Deputy Premier commit to reviewing our laws, including our Evidence Act, to ensure that those orders remaining in place over individuals suspected of involvement in those murders are finally lifted?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Deputy Premier, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (15:16): I thank the honourable member for her question. I have been asked this question during the course of this week at press conferences about that particular prisoner. I don't think there is a single person in this chamber, and I doubt there's a single South Australian, who will be at all remorseful at the death of that person. Those events are etched in the psyche, I think, of South Australians and, fundamentally, for a generation changed the way that they interacted publicly, particularly for young people.

In relation to suppression orders, I am not aware of the very particular reason the suppression orders that the honourable member refers to were made. I am happy to ask for some advice in relation to that. Suppression orders are not something the government makes. They are something that are made by the judiciary.

In relation to the issue of suppression orders generally, the South Australian Law Reform Institute recently handed down a report on suppression orders and their use in South Australia. If I remember correctly, part of the report talked about the fact that often suppression orders are used more sparingly in South Australia than many other jurisdictions, but I am happy to seek some advice on those historical suppression orders in particular.