Pod Insights The Case Of The 'queen of banning things' on suppression orders About this episode There's a lot of confusion about suppression orders. When are they used? Why are they necessary? Are they an affront to open justice?
Retired Supreme Court judge Betty King knows them well, indeed she once referred to herself as the 'queen of banning things'. In a special episode of The Case Of, Betty King explains when and why they're needed and also how they can be abused.
The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 In an ordinary Sydney suburb, a family lives unnoticed.
0:04 Speaker 01 He came across so innocent.
0:05 Speaker 00 Father and son keep mostly to themselves.
0:08 Speaker 02 We didn't go beyond the friendly nod or hello.
0:11 Speaker 00 But behind closed doors...
0:12 Speaker 01 Something's gone wrong, big time. If you don't make phone calls, nobody can tap you.
0:17 Speaker 00 A new three-part series investigates how The Road to Bondi began long before the first shots rang out. The Road to Bondi. Search Background Briefing wherever you get your podcasts. ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:39 Speaker 03 You get to describe yourself however you'd like to be described.
0:42 Speaker 04 Oh, gorgeous, young.
0:46 Speaker 04 Can I make it a dating application?
0:52 Speaker 03 We're here to take you inside courtrooms, but more often than we'd like, there's things that we can't tell you about. Things that court bars from mentioning for months, sometimes for years. And in this episode, we find out why, and if that system is working. I'm Stephen Stockwell. Welcome to a special episode of The Case Haul.
1:12 Speaker 02 His lawyer argued that his client's name should still be suppressed out of concern for his mental health.
1:17 Speaker 05 He's now appealing his conviction, but the suppression order banning his name in the press caused outrage.
1:23 Speaker 06 It is important that the justice system does strike the right balance here.
1:27 Speaker 07 The suppression order was the worst in letting them...
1:30 Speaker 02 Judge Andrew Palmer said the secrecy couldn't last forever and that he needed to face the consequences of his actions.
1:40 Speaker 03 We have had so many emails asking us why we're not allowed to tell you everything that happens inside a courtroom. And when we've got what are described as open courts, that is a very fair question to ask. So we wanted to answer it for you. To do this, we've invited someone with a huge amount of experience onto the case of a woman who jokingly referred to herself as the queen of banning things, but who more recently has been very critical of a high profile suppression that we've spoken about on the pod. This guest is a former Supreme Court judge, Betty King. To start with, what should I call you, Your Honour, former justice? Where do we sit? Betty's fine, great.
2:16 Speaker 04 That's my name.
2:17 Speaker 03 Great, thank you, Betty. Really appreciate you coming in, having a chat with us about all of this. There's a bit I'm keen to chat through, you know, how the process works, why the process works in certain ways, the problems with the suppression process. But what I'm really interested in starting with is whether or not you think at the moment the suppression's process is properly balancing the need and desire for open justice and the kind of judicial process. Is it working?
2:38 Speaker 04 I'd have to say I think in most aspects it's working. There is a new area that has opened up, and that relates to the mental health of the accused person. The Act, I don't think was ever intended to cover that, but it has been viewed as doing that. And as a result, some fairly high profile people have been able to use that section about protection of any person to include themselves being named because it might have adverse effects upon their mental health.
3:14 Speaker 03 I'm really keen to talk about this. I think the idea of, you know, the adverse mental health impact of someone who's been charged with a serious crime, you know, I think anybody who's been charged with a serious crime is going to be dealing with some pretty adverse mental health impacts, right? So.
3:24 Speaker 04 If they haven't got some adverse mental health impacts, there'd be something wrong with them.
3:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:29 Speaker 04 So it's whether or not it goes to such a level in these particular cases that it warrants or merits a suppression order. And that would have to be a fairly high standard for me.
3:41 Speaker 03 I mentioned in the intro for this that you've jokingly referred to yourself as the queen of banning things. Why? Where did you get that title from?
3:48 Speaker 04 Well, I was doing the Gangland trials, which were a series of continual, one after the other trials relating to Carl Williams. And.
3:58 Speaker 04 As a result, there were many suppression orders required because what we wanted to do was to get the trials actually running. And if you dread that Carl Williams had just been convicted of a murder and you say, right, ready for the next one, try finding a jury that could deal with that and just put what they'd immediately heard out of their mind.
4:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:21 Speaker 04 So I granted suppression orders to stop him being the subject of so much publicity. It was like he was a superstar.
4:30 Speaker 03 And is that the kind of the broad purpose of a suppression order, to kind of make it easy for a jury to kind of keep that information out of their mind when they're assessing the facts that are presented in whatever trial it is that they're overseeing and judging?
4:41 Speaker 04 The suppression orders have a number of purposes. That was the purpose of mine in the Carl Williams matters, but there are many other purposes for suppression orders. The main thing is that we want the trials to run, to proceed, to get completion. If we don't have completion, these people sit in jail for too long, and then if they sit in jail for too long, they're entitled to make an application for bail. And often it must, it might have to succeed if they're three, four years unconvicted, then you've got to really seriously consider bailing them.
5:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:16 Speaker 04 So it's for the community that you want the trials to proceed.
5:20 Speaker 03 Right. In the trial of Aaron Patterson, there was evidence that came within the pre-trial of that, that we weren't able to talk about during the trial, and in some cases was even suppressed following the trial's conclusion and through an appeal window. And when we were able to talk about that, the audience was, you know, in some sense, kind of outraged that we weren't able to discuss that, or the jury didn't hear some of that information during the trial. Why is that done? Why does that happen?
5:44 Speaker 04 They're two quite different things. A suppression order is suppressing information that would ordinarily be heard by a jury or be public to the jury.
5:56 Speaker 04 An order such as you're talking about is, there has been legal argument. The judge has excluded some evidence.
6:03 Speaker 03 Hmm.
6:03 Speaker 04 And if you make it public, then there is no point in excluding it because the jury will read it, hear it or see it. So it's automatic that the media understand they cannot
6:15 Speaker 03 Hmm.
6:15 Speaker 04 ever publish what goes on in a court in the absence of a jury.
6:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. And we're really fortunate here at the ABC, certainly with the case of, we've got some fantastic lawyers that help us when we're working through episodes, making sure we're not breaching that and and not jeopardising a trial basically by promoting something or publicising something that the jury shouldn't hear.
6:32 Speaker 04 It's an expensive process to run a trial. And if we have to run for three weeks and four weeks, and then somebody reports something that blows the whole system, and you've got to start again, that's money that costs the community.
6:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:46 Speaker 04 It also makes it terribly difficult for witnesses to have to give evidence more than once. So there are many factors, but the most important thing is two different aspects, two totally different things. No one in any jurisdiction reports what goes on in legal argument until the trial is over.
7:08 Speaker 03 Um, when you're looking at suppression orders, you've mentioned witnesses there. I mean, what can be at stake with a suppression order? How important are they?
7:16 Speaker 04 Well, in the Ganglands, for example, I put two permanent suppression orders on. And these, the names of these two people are suppressed forever.
7:27 Speaker 03 Hmm.
7:28 Speaker 04 And that's simply because they rolled over and gave evidence against Williams and others. And in the world in which they were, they all got, both got sentenced to jail and long terms, but
7:42 Speaker 04 they would be in all likelihood murdered in jail pretty quickly if people knew what their names were. And so that's what you try and stop. You actually don't want people being murdered.
7:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, a suppression order is kind of one side of it. It stops the media talking about it. But courts are kind of open to anyone to wander in as well and sit in the back and observe like, you know, is is there a mismatch there between someone being in a courtroom and being able to hear this stuff and then tell their friends about it? And, you know, a suppression order, does is is there some tension and difference there?
8:11 Speaker 04 No, I don't think there is. The difference is we we do have an open court. And people can come and watch and see justice being done. What we're preventing is this being on front page of every newspaper for every person to read the next morning. And that's because that's when the jury is likely to become aware of things that they don't need to be aware of.
8:33 Speaker 03 Yep. On one end, we have the safety of individuals, which is incredibly important, a very noble purpose for a suppression order. On the other end, we had the suppression of Tom Silvani's name during his rape trial and conviction. It was uplifted after he was convicted of rape, two counts of rape. Is that a case of someone with means being able to to game the system?
8:53 Speaker 04 I don't know if it's gaming the system, but what you've got is someone who has money, or his parents have money, and they care enormously for their son, I would presume. So they've had him treated by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist has made a report to the court. The report to the court indicates that he's got serious mental health issues. And if it is made public, then he may be at risk.
9:23 Speaker 03 Hmm.
9:25 Speaker 04 Now, what do you do as a as a judge, magistrate, whoever? If you get a report such as that in front of you, do you say, well, no one's challenging it? No one wants to cross-examine the psychiatrist. No one's disputing this. So I should just go ahead and grant the suppression order and tool the trials over.
9:45 Speaker 03 Hmm.
9:45 Speaker 04 It leaves you in, in pretty much in a no win situation as the judge and most would err on the side of caution. But my problem is, I think there should be some serious looking at the psychiatric evidence and some proper testing.
10:01 Speaker 03 And, and how does that go about? How do you properly test psychiatric evidence? You know, you've got someone there, you've got a young man who says his mental health is seriously impacted, there could be serious impacts if his name is made public. How do you then kind of, I guess sensitively, have the conversation about, well, is it?
10:16 Speaker 04 Well, the psychiatrists will have put in a report and you would call them and you would cross examine them. You would speak to another expert psychiatrist, you would ask questions and get information and you would cross examine, test whether or not this is something that he's just reacting to what's happened to him.
10:32 Speaker 03 Hmm.
10:33 Speaker 04 Or whether he's had a long underlying mental illness, whether he's been treated before or is this just arisen? There are many ways to test expert evidence.
10:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:44 Speaker 04 Because that's what a psychiatrist is giving expert evidence. But if, if it just goes through untested, you leave the court in a position of just having to accept it.
10:53 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, when you're looking at, you know, the case of Tom Savini is a, a quite a strong example for us. We've talked about it on the case of, uh, it was covered extensively by ABC News. And when you're, you know, talking about this idea of challenging it, I mean, the, the news kind of happens pretty quickly, you know, we want to be able to report stuff as soon as it's happening. Is it fair to kind of ask to, to go through this entire other process to, to get to a point where you can challenge that?
11:17 Speaker 04 Takes very short time. You can speak to a psychiatrist, get the information. Most prosecutors and people who are involved, such as media organisations, would have counsel who know about how to cross examine psychiatrists, what the issues are, what you would look at, how you test it. This would not be foreign material to them. They get the report and.
11:41 Speaker 04 Day and a half later, or day, two days later, in court testing it.
11:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, right.
11:45 Speaker 04 It shouldn't be just left as unch- totally unchallenged material unless there is something that makes it so overwhelming.
11:53 Speaker 03 Hmm.
11:53 Speaker 04 It seems to me that it looks unbalanced, simply because the only people who are doing this are people who've got the financial resources to do it. You need to have the resources to be treated by a psychiatrist in private, not, we're not talking public. You'll wait a long time to see a public psychiatrist. So they have the resources, they've often been put into a psychiatric hospital for a short period of time. And they've got the funds to brief counsel, they've got the funds to pay for the psychiatrist to come to court, to prepare a report. All those reports cost money.
12:30 Speaker 04 So it gives a strong appearance of being one rule that applies if you've got money or notoriety fame.
12:40 Speaker 03 Hmm.
12:41 Speaker 04 And one if you're just an ordinary person charged.
12:44 Speaker 03 Yeah. Something that does impress me about lawyers is the ability to find a loophole in, in these kind of processes. Like, I'm very impressed with the lawyer, like, any lawyer's commitment to the rules. I think it's kind of wonderful in a way, they, they look so closely at these things. And, and the better or kind of more expensive a lawyer is, the smaller the hole they will find to kind of squeeze through is.
13:06 Speaker 04 Not always, not always, but, but our job as lawyers is to make sure that everything's done in accordance with the law. So you do look at everything. When you look at a, an indictment, you've got to look to see that the Crown has approved each and every element of the offence.
13:24 Speaker 03 Hmm.
13:24 Speaker 04 Now, people call it loopholes, but if they've missed one, it's actually not, it's a total failure. It's not a loophole, they have failed to do their job, so.
13:35 Speaker 04 You know, you might call us loophole people, but there's actually a reason for it.
13:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, maybe loophole isn't the right word. I think maybe it is like, maybe technicality may be a better word as well. But looking at the example of the.
13:46 Speaker 04 It's not technical. Missing an element is not technical. It's fundamental. So now there are occasionally the technical things, but the way the act has been drafted, it looks like this mental health aspect can apply to an accused person. It's also equally clear, if you go back and look at the material, it's meant to apply to victims and witnesses. But on its face, it reads as though it can apply to the accused. So you can't ignore what it says on its face. So maybe that's technical, but maybe it's just bad drafting.
14:22 Speaker 03 I think maybe a better term is in the spirit of the rules, potentially.
14:25 Speaker 04 Oh, we don't do in the spirit of the rules.
14:28 Speaker 03 And that's what I was meaning.
14:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, the law's not about, you know, despite what people might think, it's actually not about the vibe.
14:36 Speaker 03 Yes.
14:37 Speaker 04 You know, we're not going to go up to the High Court and beat Denny Donutto and just go, oh yeah, the vibe, it's the vibe. It's actually about the rules.
14:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is the complete opposite of the vibe.
14:48 Speaker 04 It is the complete antithesis.
14:50 Speaker 03 If anything, yeah. And I mean, in the sense of the act that's been used in the case of Tom Savani, is the way to get people working, you know, in the spirit of that law is that to have these sort of applications challenged and then set that as a kind of process that we can then expect as these applications are made. Is that the best way to solve it?
15:09 Speaker 04 I would have thought the best way to, one of the best ways to solve it is to see, is to test it properly and take it up to the Court of Appeal. They can give a binding ruling as to whether it applies or not. And I would have thought that would resolve it.
15:23 Speaker 03 Yep.
15:24 Speaker 04 I don't know which way they'd go, but I would, you know, my gut feeling is that they would not think this applied to accused people unless it was exceptional circumstances. But that's entirely what I think. And if that doesn't work, then just have short, sharp legislative change to exclude. But that only, that takes a long time to get through Parliament. Everything takes a long time to get through Parliament. So I would have thought going up on appeal would be the process.
15:53 Speaker 03 That's an expensive process, though. You know, it's a lot for a media company to have to sort of front up and kind of take that weight to fix something that potentially the law should be fixing itself.
16:04 Speaker 04 The law doesn't act on its own volition. I don't go, I don't sit there and go, oh, I think I'll do a murder today.
16:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:11 Speaker 04 No, it's, we have to have cases brought to us. You know, the court is a repository, like you come to us and say, tell us an answer.
16:19 Speaker 03 Hmm.
16:19 Speaker 04 We can't just give guidance unless someone brings an actual case to us.
16:24 Speaker 03 Is there an imbalance between the kind of expectation of the media to, to kind of follow these rules? Tom Savani, another good example of, you know, no one in the mainstream media was reporting any of that information because the number of eyes that would have been on us and the, and the penalties would have been handed down if we breached that suppression. But there were dozens, if not hundreds of people talking about this on social media platforms, on forums. I mean, is there, is the balance, has it been lost with the such free discussion online?
16:50 Speaker 04 It's hard because this is the main media that you can, you're dealing with in respect of this. It's very hard for the courts, the police, anyone to actually follow all of the social media and find out what is out there. Whereas with, of course, the main media, news, shows and television, newspapers, you can find out what's on it because it's easy. But, and that's also what, if a jury is looking at something or are worried about that, that's what people mainly look at. Gossip has never been able to be stopped. So you can't spend your time concerned about that.
17:32 Speaker 04 But I do think it's going to be a big problem in the future as people get their news from more and more different sources.
17:40 Speaker 03 Yeah. There should be, should there be steps or processes being taken now to try and stop that? Should we, you know, should there be the prosecution of smaller individuals, of individuals, basically people on your social media pages to penalise them from spreading that information to try and stop that? Or is, is there another way we, we should be approaching it?
17:57 Speaker 04 Well, I I still think most suppression orders work in the main. People did know, some people certainly knew about Tom Sylvani after the arrest.
18:06 Speaker 03 Hmm.
18:06 Speaker 04 Sorry, after the verdict, but there were an awful lot that didn't. And so he didn't have that same, it was splashed over the front page of the newspaper or leading the seven o'clock news. And so in terms of impacting his mental health.
18:24 Speaker 03 Hmm.
18:25 Speaker 04 I would have thought it had done its job and it at some stage it had to be lifted anyway. At some point it had to come off. And it should have come off, I would have thought, immediately after the trial. And that's what ultimately the trial judge did, just went, this is, this is a nonsense now and lifted it.
18:44 Speaker 03 We, you know, we've got Tom Sylvani on one side, there's been a ruling quite recently about whether or not content needs to be taken down ahead of the retrial of accused murderer Gregory Lin. The judge has ruled that it doesn't need to be, that it can remain up. I mean, there was a lot of conversation about how that, what needed to happen there in court. Does that show that the system is working, the process works?
19:04 Speaker 04 Well, I think, I think it does demonstrate to a large degree that the system does work. What it shows is that the courts aren't oversensitive to people. What they want is to stop the immediacy of something being, that's being heard in court, being reported outside, that the jury or the jury about to be impaneled. And I remember when I banned Underbelly and everyone said, oh, it's pointless because, you know, it's going to be available in New South Wales because my jurisdiction stopped at the Victorian border. And I said, it's not pointless because it's not going to be beamed into everyone's lounge room at seven thirty on a Wednesday night. Yes, people will get copies, but they will be a minority.
19:49 Speaker 04 And what you find with Greg Lin is that happened in the past, it's some time down the track.
19:55 Speaker 03 Hmm.
19:55 Speaker 04 And you can't stop every bit of adverse publicity about someone.
19:59 Speaker 03 Hmm.
20:00 Speaker 04 What you can do is try and make it. At the time, the best you can.
20:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, the thing I found really interesting with in the situation with Gregory Lin is that, you know, the way that this media was being referred to as being accessible and available and all of that was the same way that media would have been accessible and available thirty years ago. It would have been printed in newspaper, you can go to the library, you can get the newspaper from three years ago if you want, you can have a look at it. So it's still available. I just, I found it interesting that there didn't seem to be that, you know, understanding of how the media had moved and that had changed over the last kind of thirty years. I- is that a problem, do you think, that there's been a lack of awareness of the way the media has changed in the last, I mean, really, probably ten years in the way that we've distributed information and the way that we publish information? Is that, is that causing problems between the media and the, and the, and the bench?
20:46 Speaker 04 No, I think what causes problems between the media and the bench with the greatest respect to all of those in the media is that they want everything. They want every single thing irrespective of whether it is harmful to a trial that's about to start or is running or harmful to potentially a witness in the trial. And I understand they want everything, but they just can't have everything. And that's the tension, and it will always be the tension.
21:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's, there was a conversation recently where the, um, the judiciary sort of asked the media to kind of trust them. And, you know, that's not really the media's job. Our job's not to kind of trust anyone, really. It's sort of there to be, to hold people accountable. But to borrow from those words, should the judiciary just kind of trust the media? That we're going to do the right thing, that we're going to release what's relevant and what's important to the public, that, that that's what we can, we can kind of judge fairly within the law?
21:38 Speaker 04 Well, it's this interesting concept of trusting each other because neither trusts the other, I'm sure. I mean, I wrote an, an opinion piece for the Age and I thought it was reasonably balanced and.
21:53 Speaker 04 But the headline bore no resemblance to what was contained in there. It said that I had said Tom Sylvani should never have received an suppression order. Nowhere in the article did that come up. So it tends to erode your trust. I mean, I did trial after trial that was in the paper and I'd just sit there and go, gee, I thought I was in that case. And but you wouldn't recognise it from the reporting. So it, the problem is distrust built up over time. But hopefully, I think each is a bit more aware of the other's concern now. And I think they're talking and trying to come to some middle ground.
22:36 Speaker 03 Something that surprised me with some proceedings I've watched in the last six months or so is is actually the way that, you know, whoever's sitting on the bench talks about the media. There's been moments where I've seen whoever's at the bench kind of almost in furious agreement with a defence barrister, criticising the media for, you know, not understanding the idea of subduty contempt, which, you know, is the, the idea that, well, it means that we can't publish anything, it's going to prejudice a trial, which, yeah, we do understand. We do have lawyers working with us and advising us on and all of that. And I mean.
23:05 Speaker 04 But sometimes they do publish some things that you think, wow, who said that was okay? So and that and it's pretty frustrating when you're the judge and you're trying to get something up and running and you've been trying for eighteen months to get this case on. And then something comes up in the media and blows your chances and off it goes for six months. It's just about frustration when these things happen. It's not because people don't like the media and I'm sure it's not because the media don't like the courts or the judges. But frustration builds on both sides.
23:39 Speaker 03 And when you say, you know, something blows your chances of having a trial, what do you mean by that? What impact can that reporting have?
23:44 Speaker 04 Oh, well, for example, they might do something.
23:49 Speaker 04 I'll try and think of a.
23:51 Speaker 03 Try and throw anyone specific under the bus?
23:52 Speaker 04 No.
23:55 Speaker 04 I could do that easy, but. Um, well, you are about to start the murder, trial of a murderer of a child by the parent. And two days before, there's an article about murders of children and they used that, they used the case that you're about to start as an example. And they include in it things that are probably going to be excluded. The opinions of the other parent, the opinions of the police about whether he's guilty. And all of that, if it's a couple of days or a week before the trial, means you're just gonna have to take that trial out.
24:35 Speaker 04 Let that publicity die. We know it doesn't go away forever, but it dies. It's not fresh in the mind of the twelve people you're about to empanel. So that's again, we, and that happens a lot. Or it used to happen a lot in my time. I'm not so sure it does now. I hope it doesn't. But it actually prevents you from running the trial. You've got your whole, like you're, you're booked to run that murder. We don't just do murders. Oh, bring on another murder tomorrow. They are booked months in advance. You block out your time. So you've got to get something else for the judge to do. You've, the prosecutors, the barristers, the witnesses, everyone's lined up and it's all gone. And it's gone because somebody wanted to write something.
25:21 Speaker 03 You know, in a situation like that, there are a number of levers that are available to a judge leading into a trial. You know, when you're, when you're briefing a jury, when you're talking to a jury, giving them direction ahead of a trial. You can say, look, you know, they're all told, don't read the media, don't engage with these things. Um, there's other mechanisms in place. I mean, do you need to hold off like that? Or can you trust a jury to, to make the right decision to exclude that from their mind?
25:46 Speaker 04 All right, you exclude from your mind that Carl Williams was convicted of anything. And then tell me your opinion of Carl Williams, just based on all the other facts. No, you don't want them to be superhuman. It is very hard to exclude something that is fresh in your mind. As it goes further away, it's easier. It becomes vaguer. Yes, I've I've read something about this. But as a judge, I used to explain to my juries, not only you can't go and look online and all of this. I'd explain why and just say, you've taken an oath to give it a verdict according to the evidence. If you go read all that stuff, that's not evidence. And you bring it all with you and guess what?
26:31 Speaker 04 You're not being true to your oath. So what should be done more often is explain why you've made a ruling to the jury. I often used to explain why I've just, remember we stopped that? And I said, they can't ask that question. There's a reason for it. And I'd tell them as if I could, I would tell them why. Because they're not stupid. And if they understand, I think you've got a much better chance of a jury obeying you.
26:57 Speaker 03 And and, you know, I think the important thing for people to understand around that is that there are such specific rules of evidence of what can be presented in a court, of how someone can be questioned and all of that, that to the ordinary person, you would never consider you've never come across in day to day life, right?
27:11 Speaker 04 Oh, no. And and I think it's interesting that people think we just make it up. But this is Parliament. Parliament sets a law and we as judges have to follow the law. If we don't follow the law, then there's a retrial or the case is thrown out. We don't have a choice.
27:31 Speaker 04 So we have to follow the law. And that's why I think it's very important that you explain it to them.
27:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. You know, we were talking a little bit before about the relationship between the media and the judiciary. Do you think the media understands all those rules and all those laws?
27:45 Speaker 04 I think.
27:47 Speaker 04 Depending upon who's listening or who's come to court to report it. It used to be that you had very dedicated court reporters and they really did understand. They had a lot less trouble. But my understanding equally now is that the county court run programmes for new reporters, new court reporters, so they can educate them about what you can and can't do and why. So, I mean, I think that's great on the part of the courts. And I understand why the media don't have the dedicated reporters they had because it all costs too much money. And everything ultimately comes down to money.
28:23 Speaker 03 And that's, yeah, that's kind of where I come at a lot of this from is that there's, there's processes to fight suppression orders. There's ways to kind of, you know, try to update the system in the Sylvani case where, you know, we can challenge these things. But it, it's all expensive, it's all money and, you know, media organisations have less and less of it. Should another party be standing up here and, and taking some of that on?
28:44 Speaker 04 And who's going to fund it? Okay, lovely, let's have an independent who does it, but who's going to pay for it?
28:51 Speaker 03 Same, same kind of problem.
28:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, we don't, like, we don't have, the OPP is starved of funds, the Victorian Legal Aid is starved of funds. What, we have this to fight the rich boys?
29:03 Speaker 03 Hmm.
29:04 Speaker 04 And girls? No, it's, it's just ultimately about money. There needs to be a bit more trust, I think, from the media towards judges.
29:12 Speaker 03 Hmm.
29:12 Speaker 04 Because judges are not in the main, ninety, nine point nine percent doing this because they believe they have to. You know, according to the law. There'll be always a percentage of every profession, every job, that just goes off on a frolic. But hopefully, if that happens, they can at some stage be reined in.
29:36 Speaker 03 But when you're looking at, you know, the purpose of the law, how the law is supposed to serve the people as well. If it's, if it's about money, that you, if you don't have people checking this process, you say the law isn't going to check itself. Does that mean that the law is going to stop serving us in the way that it should be serving us?
29:50 Speaker 04 Well, no, that's, if the media want to report, right, then they need to fight the suppression orders.
29:58 Speaker 04 It's not just, hey, you know, the courts should just do it on their own. No, they don't. They they act upon the material before them. And it's no, Buck, it's not the police wanting to publicise the names, it's not the OPP, it's the media.
30:13 Speaker 03 Uh, I was very interested in the um, the county court, uh, course you mentioned just before, because I have been reporting on courts now for about a year. This is a very new experience for me. And it's been wonderful to learn so much about all of this. And, you know, something that I've really appreciated learning is how the judiciary works, how judges work, all of these rules, all of these laws, all of this, uh, the whole system, really. What do you think we could do or what do you think could be done to help kind of repair the relationship between media and the judiciary?
30:39 Speaker 04 Well, I I think first of all, they need to talk to each other. And I, my understanding is that there are some committees where they get together. When we had terrible trouble, when I was at the bar, we had terrible trouble between the police association and and police generally and the bar.
30:58 Speaker 03 Hmm.
30:58 Speaker 04 It was really bad. And so we just formed a committee and called it the Pigs and Wigs.
31:05 Speaker 04 Um, and it solved a lot of problems and issues. Because we could take something to one of the people on the committee and say, look, this is what happened. And then they could take it to the police to deal with their members. And it was done on a relatively informal basis and it it really helped resolve. And I would have thought, you know, the courts and reporters could get together and just chat about what the problems are, talk about it, don't go to forums, talk about it to each other. The person who can do something about it, both sides.
31:41 Speaker 03 Hmm.
31:42 Speaker 04 Are those people.
31:43 Speaker 03 Yep.
31:43 Speaker 04 So I just think a bit of trust would be nice, but no one trusts anyone nowadays, do they? And with AI, how can you?
31:53 Speaker 03 Exactly, yes. Well, that's it. Well, look, I think that's a nice place to to kind of wrap things up. Place we can end is, you know, maybe a bit more trust between everyone. Um, I'm not sure I can see it happening.
32:02 Speaker 04 I think if the courts and the the media got together, there would be a bit more trust. I do think that's a a quite viable proposition. It won't, they won't end up in a love fest. But I think there would be a better understanding both ways and a better response as a result.
32:24 Speaker 03 Petty King, thank you so much for joining us on The Case Of. You're welcome.
32:31 Speaker 03 The Case Of is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rollinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Wurundjeri people.
Previous 09 The Two Intruders | A third intruder? Next 07 Wheelie Bin Murder I A surprise twist Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated