Common Threads

This part of the Justice Connections Symposium included three papers: one on a particular amending statute in the area of sexual and violent offences; and two on sentencing — the first concerning the relevance of Aboriginality in sentencing, the second on data collection.

I was delighted to undertake such a responsibility for the first Justice Connections Symposium held by the University of Canberra in 2011 and the set of papers I commented upon then was similarly grouped under the heading “Justice Behind the Scenes”. On that occasion I was able to point to echoes in my own work. Curiosity about how legislation gets to where it is, revealed to me how accidental, or serendipitous, much law reform can be — especially when considered outside the arena of contributions by institutional law reform bodies, such as the Australian Law Reform Commission.^{[1] [2] In drawing the threads together on that occasion I spoke of the power of people in law reform. A happy coincidence was the fact that the Symposium was held on Mabo Day, 3 June — the day on which the High Court delivered its judgment in Mabo & Ors v Qld (No 2), upholding the continuity of Koiki Mabo’s title to his land on Murray Island and, with it, signalling the end of terra nullius in Australia. That litigation grew out of a meeting between a gardener and a couple of academics. The gardener was Koiki or “Eddie” as he was known. In 1974 Koiki had a conversation with James Cook University academics, Professor Noel Loos and Henry Reynolds, about his land on Mer (Murray Island) that started a ball rolling that ended up in the High Court, making legal history. It was a fortuitous — serendipitous — meeting, combining principle, passion and champions.}

Once law reform “happens”, through the introduction of new laws — such as the Sexual and Violent Offences Legislation Amendment Act 2008 (ACT)^[3] — justice “behind the scenes” invites a different kind of consideration. It is now not about how the law happened, but rather, is it working? Is it fair?