Crikey

The Victorian Education Department has, this week, interfered in the justice system in a most sinister way. It has suspended a student welfare co-ordinator because she gave character evidence on behalf of Gary Faux who pleaded guilty to s-xually abusing two school girls.

That student welfare co-ordinator Robyn Hughes of Heatherhill Secondary College, told Melbourne’s County Court that while she did not approve of Faux’s conduct in this case, she noted he was caring and loving to the students he admitted abusing.

The Education Department panicked and this week has suspended Ms Hughes from her welfare duties and ordered an investigation into her decision to give character evidence.

This is clearly a case of interfering with potential witnesses. What the Education Department is saying to its employees is that they should not speak frankly and in court about how they have found colleagues in trouble with the law.

The great English judge, Lord Alfred Denning will be turning in his grave if he knew that Victoria’s education bureaucrats were nobbling witnesses. As he once famously said:

“How can we expect a witness to give evidence freely and frankly, as he ought to if he is liable, as soon as the case is over, to be punished for it by those who dislike the evidence he has given? Let us accept that he has honestly given his evidence. Is he to be liable to be dismissed from his employment, or to be expelled from his trade union, or to be deprived of his office, or to be sent to Coventry, simply because of that evidence which he has given? I decline to believe that the law of England permits him to be so treated. If this sort of thing could be done in a single case with impunity, the news of it would soon get around. Witnesses in other cases would be unwilling to come forward, they would hesitate to speak the truth for fear of the consequences.”

Denning was right and Victoria’s education department bureaucrats ought to leave Ms Hughes alone and respect the right of any individual employed by them to give evidence to our courts freely and frankly and without fearing they are going to be subject to a witch hunt.