There could very properly be secret prosecutions and secret jailings occurring now and so they can and can proceed till the legislation is reformed.
Many readers would have a passing consciousness of the “Alan Johns” or “Witness J” matter, through which a former intelligence officer was secretly charged, arraigned, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned in a Canberra jail in “unprecedented” Kafkaesque-like model in early 2019.
However few would know of this telling change between Greens Senator David Shoebridge and the impartial nationwide safety laws monitor, Grant Donaldson SC, two months in the past.
“All the orders that had been made within the Alan Johns matter that gave rise to [its secrecy] had been made by the consent of the events,” Donaldson mentioned, as he fronted the Senate’s Authorized and Constitutional Affairs Laws Committee.
Signal as much as preserve studying.
Get impartial journalism all through 2023. Join your first 12 weeks of Crikey for $12.
Be a part of us
