On 1 June 2017 the Court of Appeal commenced a pilot of making audio-visual recordings of some of its criminal hearings publicly available through the Supreme Court of Victoria’s website.
The Court of Appeal took this course to improve its transparency, accessibility and the accurate reporting of proceedings.
Hearings of the following types are excluded from the pilot:
- Applications for leave to appeal heard separately from the appeal.
- Renewed applications for leave to appeal.
- Interlocutory appeals.
- Conviction appeals that result in a matter being remitted for re-hearing.
- Applications involving sexual offences.
- Applications involving self-represented litigants and/or minors.
- Judgment deliveries except in cases of particular public interest where a judgment summary will be read.
- Any applications deemed by the Court of Appeal to be inappropriate for inclusion in the pilot.
To aid understanding of the recordings the Court of Appeal is publishing on the Supreme Court website the corresponding applications for leave to appeal and all parties’ written cases. A party’s legal representative is responsible for ensuring that its application for leave to appeal and/or written case are in a form suitable for publication on the internet or are accompanied by a redacted form of the application for leave to appeal and/or written case suitable for publication on the internet.
During the pilot, where a party or its representative objects to the webcasting of a hearing, the hearing will not be webcast. The same applies to the publication of appeal documents.
Audio-visual recordings will usually be made available a few business days after the hearing. This delay enables the Court to review the recording and to edit it, if necessary, to ensure it does not publish information that should not be published.
For further information please contact the Court of Appeal registry at pbnertvfgel@fhcpbheg.ivp.tbi.nhua.vog.civ.truocpus@yrtsigeraoc
Download a PDF version of the Notice below.
Please Note
This Notice was amended on 20 June 2017 to provide further information about objections that may be made to a recording being included in the pilot; to indicate that the audio-visual recordings will be made available on the Supreme Court of Victoria website; and to replace the word 'streaming' with 'webcasting' to avoid any suggestion that in the usual course, recordings will be made available in real time.