Gag orders that briefly prevented the identification of the man charged with the murder of Ballarat mother Samantha Murphy have reignited debate over Victoria’s tag as the “suppression order capital”.
The 22-year-old man appeared before Ballarat Magistrates Court on Thursday, where an interim order was made suppressing his name, specific address and date of birth.
A magistrate granted the order after the man’s lawyer, Michael Tamanika submitted his client was at risk of harm due to the high-profile nature of the case.
It came after the son of an ex-AFL player’s name and picture were plastered across news reports and social media for hours.
Lawyers were able to overturn the suppression order on Friday morning, allowing media outlets to identify the alleged murderer as Patrick Orren Stephenson, the son of former AFL player Orren Stephenson.
The alleged killer’s lawyer David Tamanika decried the “media storm” about the suppression order and said his client had “instructed me to withdraw” the application.
Jason Bosland’s research helped inform the Open Justice Act, introduced in 2013 amid concerns suppression orders were issued too frequently in Victoria.
The associate professor at the University of Melbourne said on raw numbers not much has changed since, but more recent studies show the narrative that Victorian courts were the least transparent was a “myth”.
“If you’re looking at the rate of suppression … South Australia is by far the most suppression friendly, Western Australia as well,” he said.
Assoc Prof Bosland said simply counting the number of orders was misleading, as Victoria was one of the only jurisdictions to notify media of each one it makes.
He said statutory orders for serious sexual offenders and people found not fit to stand trial on mental illness, which aren’t made in all states, boosted Victoria’s overall number.
“If you take out all those orders … the rate of suppression in Victoria is far lower than it appears,” he said.
Suppression or non publication orders are made for a variety of reasons – such as to protect the safety of an accused, witness or victim, or to prevent certain evidence from prejudicing a separate trial.
A recent analysis by The Australian newspaper found 521 suppression orders were made by Victorian courts in 2023 – almost half the 1111 generated nationally.
In NSW, which has an estimated 1.5 million more residents than its southern neighbour, there were only 133 gag orders made by the state’s courts last year.
South Australia recorded 308 suppression orders in the same period.
Media in Victoria have long rallied against the number of court orders restricting open justice, and its journalists from reporting on cases carrying significant public interest.
Prominent media lawyer Justin Quill wrote in The Herald Sun on Wednesday that Victoria was known among his interstate legal colleagues as the “suppression order capital”.
Mr Quill represented the paper during its successful fight to identify barrister Nicola Gobbo as the so-called “Lawyer X” in 2019, and finally reveal one of the state’s biggest legal scandals.
“What is universally acknowledged by interstate media lawyers is that judges and courts in this state make too many suppression orders, and too many times in circumstances where they shouldn’t, or where they wouldn’t be made in other states,” he wrote yesterday.
Mr Quill said the propensity of the courts in the state to make such orders created the risk of fostering a “secret justice” system, if that attitude was not checked.
“Victoria is not too far off that – if we’re not there already,” he wrote.
A partner at Thomson Greer Lawyers, he expressed the view the that – based on the information he had available – the orders made in court yesterday were not justified.
If the underlying argument in favour of the order was the risk of self-harm, he wrote, “isn’t keeping an accused safe in prison the job of Corrections Victoria, not of a magistrate or judge?”
The mystery surrounding Ms Murphy’s disappearance during a jog in bushland near her Ballarat East home on February 4 captured the imagination of the nation.
Victoria Police announced on Thursday morning it had arrested a man in connection with its investigation, before charging him with murder later that afternoon.
Ms Murphy’s husband, Michael Murphy briefly spoke to media outside the family home after news broke of the charge being laid.
“God, the adrenaline with everything that’s been going on, it’s just trying to be brave for everybody,” he said.
“It’s something that we wouldn’t want anyone to experience.”
Ms Murphy’s body has still not been found, as police intensify their search for her remains.