This summary helps to clarify this increasingly confusing situation:
Change to Collaery secret evidence refused
Dominic Giannini – The Canberra Times – 7 December 2021
The Commonwealth’s bid to update secret evidence against Bernard Collaery has been rejected.
The ACT Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by the Commonwealth to update secret evidence in its prosecution of whistleblower Bernard Collaery.
The attorney-general had sought to update evidence – which Collaery and his lawyers are unable to see, and was first taken two years ago – by arguing time had rendered parts of it inaccurate.
But Justice David Mossop ruled that updating the evidence would go beyond the remit given to him by the Court of Appeal, which sent the matter back to him after ruling that the case should be held in open court.
The Commonwealth had pushed for the case to be heard in secret on national security grounds, which Justice Mossop initially agreed to.
But his decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal which ruled that public confidence in the justice system springs from an open court process and deters political prosecutions.
The Court of Appeal ruled that Justice Mossop had put too much emphasis on national security and too little on administering justice when he originally ruled the case could be held in secret.
It said an open court stands as a bulwark against political prosecutions by allowing public scrutiny.
But the Court of Appeal sent the case back to Justice Mossop to deal with the issue of evidence only the judge could see.
Following his move to disallow updates to the secret evidence, Justice Mossop will now deal with whether evidence Collaery does not have access to will be allowed to be used against him at trial.
The parties are due back in court on Wednesday morning.
The ruling is a small win for Collaery but the attorney-general can still choose to make a fresh application for more restrictive orders on the basis of changes to the current circumstances.
The Attorney-General’s astounding attempt to introduce new evidence in response to the judgement favourable to Bernard Collaery by the ACT Court of Appeal has been scotched – for the time being.
Here is Christopher Knaus’s article of December 7.