Shadow Attorney General George Brandis:
A great deal of nonsense has been talked about the presumption of innocence in the Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper cases.By invoking this principle, Julia Gillard has tried to stifle public discussion and parliamentary scrutiny of events that are a matter of legitimate public interest.
As respected Brisbane QC Tony Morris pointed out in The Spectator Australia this week, the presumption of innocence is a legal rule about the burden of proof in criminal trials. It exists only within the context of a criminal trial and can be understood only as an aspect of the laws governing criminal evidence and procedure. As the author of the canonical text on the law of evidence, Rupert Cross, says: “When it is said that an accused person is presumed to be innocent, all that is meant is that the prosecution is obliged to prove the case against him beyond reasonable doubt.”…
Of course, Gillard is happy to abandon the presumption of innocence when it suits her. Julian Assange was afforded no presumption of innocence when she declared him—wrongly—to have broken Australian law… The Australian Defence Force Academy’s Bruce Kafer—against whom no allegations were made—enjoyed no presumption of innocence from the Gillard government last year…. Howard and Peter Reith were vouchsafed no presumption of innocence by the Labor Party over the “children overboard” allegations, nor Alexander Downer over the oil-for-food scandal. Of course, those gentlemen didn’t invoke the presumption of innocence, because they were confident that they had done no wrong.
People who know they have nothing to hide rarely, as the Americans would say, “take the fifth”. But in the dystopia that is the Gillard government, the presumption of innocence has become the refuge of the scoundrel.
