Australia: Reform of Criminal Trial Procedure — The Limits of the Right to Silence

The report of the Working Group on Criminal Trial Procedure did not discuss the right to silence in any detail or arrive at any conclusion about it. There were, it appears, two reasons for this. First, it would have required considerable research and time and, as the report in effect remarks, the members did not have the luxury of either. Secondly, at the time this report was published, reports from the New South Wales Law Reform Commission and the Western Australian Law Reform Commission on this topic were expected. The former has not yet appeared; the second is referred to below.