Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy reveals plans for law and order overhaul

New laws forcing crooks to cough up cash for their victims and plans to stop crims using the Lawyer X scandal to go free are just some of the fresh push aimed at improving Victoria’s justice system.

Jill Hennessy says the work is really starting to take off. Picture: Mark Stewart

Victoria’s new Attorney-General has flagged the state’s biggest law and order shake-up in years.

New laws forcing crooks to cough up cash for their victims, an overhaul of defamation laws to protect journalists and a fresh bid to break open the state’s suppression order culture are all in the works.

Legal moves to thwart criminals trying to use the Lawyer X scandal, which triggered the Royal Commission into Management of Police Informants, to overturn their convictions are also being considered.

Attorney-General Jill Hennessy, in her first major interview since becoming the state’s chief law officer, said she was planning wide-ranging reforms to make the justice system less secretive and more sensitive to victims.

Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy in her Melbourne office. Picture: Mark Stewart

“That work is really starting to take off but we’ve still got a long way to go,” she told the Sunday Herald Sun.

“There is significant work to be done to make the justice system more transparent, and it is critical that it is more transparent.”

She also revealed she was paying close attention to sentencing trends, amid public outcry about cases including the nine-year term for manslaughter given to wife-killer Borce Ristevski.

While Ms Hennessy refused to comment on the Ristevski sentence, which is being appealed, she said: “I’ll be monitoring sentencing trends and ensuring that we’ve got the right sentencing tools to reflect the breadth of offending behaviour.”

Borce Ristevski at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne. Picture: AAP

Wholesale changes will be made to the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal so that it is no longer “an adversarial experience” and helps people who do not see themselves as victims.

Ms Hennessy promised more financial and emotional support for victims, adding that she was open to raising more money by hitting convicted criminals with a new levy.

“A more wholesome and holistic view of justice actually does mean looking at the financial consequences as well as people’s liberty,” she said.

Ms Hennessy is also vowing to overhaul the state’s suppression and contempt laws — possibly including judge-only trials — as she declared the system had “not withstood the change that modern technology has delivered”.

MORE: LAWYER X SCANDAL A TOUGH START FOR ATTORNEY-GENERAL

And she said she planned to increase the threshold for what constituted defamatory statements to ensure journalists were “able to ask uncomfortable questions”.

Speaking before she asked the Court of Appeal to consider gangland killer Faruk Orman’s petition for mercy, Ms Hennessy said the government wanted to ensure violent offenders did not “get away with their crimes” and was considering laws to deal with those whose convictions were tainted by Nicola Gobbo’s informing.

“The scale and scope of what is unfolding at the commission means that there are going to have to be some very significant decisions made,” she said.

Ms Hennessy also backed royal commissioner Margaret McMurdo’s ­efforts to make the inquiry “as open and transparent as possible”, amid issues with document disclosures by Victoria Police.

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