CORRIGENDUM

Amendment to the Reasons for Decision of Branson J delivered on 14 June 2000:

Delete paragraph 39 and replace with the following:

“39                    Sections 12 and 13 of the Listening Devices Act reveal a clear intention that where a private conversation has come to the knowledge of a person as the result of the use of a listening device in contravention of s 5 of the Act, that person may not produce a record of the conversation in legal proceedings.  It is less clear, however, that s 13 reaches to every means by which a recording of a conversation might properly be tendered in evidence.  It may be doubted, for example, that a person at the end of a “chain of evidence” concerning a recording, but who has not listened to the recording, is a person who has come to have knowledge of the conversation within the meaning of s 13(1) of the Act.  Nonetheless, I conclude that s 13(1) is to be construed as reaching to recordings of conversations made in contravention of s 5, and to transcripts prepared from such recordings.  It may perhaps best be regarded as doing so by the indirect means of rendering inadmissible evidence of the circumstances in which the recordings were made – on the basis that such evidence was obtained “as a direct consequence of the conversations so coming to the knowledge [of the witness]” within the meaning of s 13(1)(b) of the Listening Devices Act.”

Associate:

Dated:                                      14 June 2000