First South Australian law reform committee (1968-87) appointed by state government faces daunting list of matters
The South Australian Law reform Committee's first recommendations to the attorney general were amendments to the Evidence Act 1929-68 and one to the Children's Protection Act 1936-61
A daunting list of matters was referred from 1968 to the Law Reform Committee of South Australia, the first to be created by the state government. The committee continued until 1987. Previously, South Australia had voluntary law reform bodies, including one started by the Law Society of South Australia.
The Law Reform Committee of South Australia had five members: two recommended by the attorney general, one by the council of the Law Society of South Australia, one from Adelaide University's law department, appointed by its faculty and one recommended by parliament’s leader of the opposition. Supreme court justice Howard Zelling of the was its first chairman and remained so for its 20 years.
The committee could be directed by the attorney-general inquire into and make reports on matters concerning existing law or recommend and give advice to the attorney general on any matter concerning existing law or and recommend changes. This was far more liberal than, for example, in New South Wales where the Law Reform Commission Act didn’t provide for its committee to propose any matter of law reform to the attorney general.
The South Australian committee’s first recommendations to the attorney general were amendments to the Evidence Act 1929-68 and one to the Children's Protection Act 1936-61. This involved inserting a section 45A in the Evidence Act, creating an exception to hearsay evidence rule similar to the Civil Evidence Act 1968 (U.K.) section 47. It also recommended altering the same act so a spouse could be both a competent and a compellable witness in a prosecution under sections 5 or 11 of the Children's Protection Act. Ancillary amendments provided that a doctor who reasonably suspected ill treatment of a child could report his suspicions to a police officer under absolute privilege.
Later reports recommended the enactment of a new Commercial Arbitration Act, replacing the direct recourse provision in section 118, Motor Vehicles Act, 1959-68 with a limited right of suit between spouses over the common law rule of unity of spouses, minor changes to the Oaths Act 1936 and the Testator's Family Maintenance Act 1925-43, and the virtual repeal of section 17 of the Wills Act 1936-66.
The daunting list of matters referred to the committee by the attorney general included the whole of the criminal law relating to suicide, attempted suicide and homosexuality; the Trustee Act, the rule against perpetuities, misfeasance and non-feasance,; the general question of legal discrimination against women, the status of illegitimacy, the admissibility of evidence produced in documentary form by computers, the danger of invasion of privacy from unrestricted use of data banks and computer-stored information, the law of libel and slander, the Real Property Act and the law relating to animals.
