AUSTRALIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE ORGANISATION ACT 1979 - SECT 34EC Court's powers to order disclosure and to ensure a fair trial

AUSTRALIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE ORGANISATION ACT 1979 - SECT 34EC

Court may order that material may be disclosed

  (1)   A court may, on application or on its own initiative, order that questioning material or derivative material may be disclosed to prosecutors of the subject for the material if the court is satisfied that the disclosure is required:

  (a)   in the interests of justice; and

  (b)   despite any direction given under subsection   34DF(1).

The order may specify the prosecutors (by any means), and the uses to which the prosecutors may put the material.

  (2)   Subsection   (1) applies to:

  (a)   if the subject has been charged with a related offence before a federal court or a court of a State or Territory--that court; or

  (b)   otherwise--a federal court (other than the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Division   1)) or a court of a State or Territory.

Court's powers to ensure the subject's fair trial

  (3)   This Subdivision does not, by implication, restrict a court's power to make any orders necessary to ensure that the fair trial of a subject for questioning material or derivative material is not prejudiced by the possession or use of the material by a prosecutor of the subject.

  (4)   However, a person's trial for:

  (a)   an offence against a law of the Commonwealth or of a Territory; or

  (b)   an offence against a law of a State that has a federal aspect (within the meaning of the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 );

is not unfair merely because the person has been the subject of a questioning warrant. This applies whether the person became the subject:

  (c)   before being charged with the offence and before such a charge was imminent; or

  (d)   after being charged with the offence or after such a charge was imminent.

  (5)   Without limiting its effect apart from this subsection, this Act also has the effect it would have if subsection   (4), or paragraph   (4)(d), had not been enacted.