Chapter 17 - Witnesses
Protection of witnesses
The formal power possessed by the Senate in relation to witnesses is
therefore very great: witnesses may be summoned to appear to give evidence and
produce documents and any failure to do so may be punished as a contempt. There are no
explicit legal limitations to these powers, except that a person punished for a
contempt may seek judicial review of the penalty on the basis that a refusal to
attend, produce documents or give evidence did not amount to an obstruction of
the Senate (see Chapter 2, Parliamentary Privilege), but such an application
would be unlikely to succeed.
The corollary of the great power over witnesses possessed by the
Senate, however, is that witnesses possess extensive legal protection in
respect of their cooperation with Senate inquiries. Moreover, to ensure that
its powers over witnesses are not used oppressively, the Senate has adopted
significant procedural protections of the rights of witnesses.
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