Lawyers representing media organisations seeking to identify a high-profile Queensland man during an ongoing extortion case say they can find no legal precedent for keeping his identity secret, a court has heard.
That man – referred to in court as MM – is not a party to the extortion case.
Another man, who is from far north Queensland and has been given the pseudonym ABC, is facing charges in relation to an alleged extortion attempt against a woman referred to in court as “the complainant”.
The alleged extortion attempt related to MM’s conduct.
MM’s identity was suppressed by a magistrate last month after an application by the Queensland police commissioner, Brett Pointing.
Media organisations have since applied for a judicial review of that decision, which was part-heard in the supreme court in Cairns on Friday.
Justice James Henry made new orders prohibiting publication of any information that would identify MM or the complainant prior to consideration of the arguments heard in open court on Friday.
Barrister Andrew O’Brien, representing media organisations, told the court he could find no relevant legal “authority” where the court had granted protection to a third party who was neither a complainant or a witness.
“The law just doesn’t provide, as a matter of principle, for protection of MM in this case … unless MM has that status as a witness or a victim,” O’Brien said.
“Extortion is when a third party who wasn’t party to [a] guilty secret threatens to expose it.
“What the law doesn’t do is suppress the ventilation of the guilty secret. The conduct, the subject, the threat, is a matter that will, in every case of this kind, be ventilated in an open court.
“Our reading of the [precedent] cases is that the balances that are being struck in cases of this kind is that protection is afforded to the identity of the victim, but that the principle has not been taken beyond that.”
Henry queried O’Brien about the need not to deter complainants from coming forward.
“If the extortion targets a secret … that involves two people, they may hesitate to [come forward] if they know that their fellow participant in the so-called secret might be named,” Henry said.
Jonathan Horton KC, for Pointing, said the complainant had been “particularly vulnerable” to the revelation, and that records of police interviews documented her “distress”.
Horton suggested MM was also victim in the case, albeit “more remote” than the complainant.
“Although no one points to a case where the more remote victim is covered by an order, there is still that central touchstone of not deterring complainants like this one.
“One could decide the case in the abstract and lose sight of cases exactly like this one.”
Henry has reserved his decision.
