In 1973 a report on privacy law in South Australia
warned of the risk of “wire tapping” and “electronic
eavesdropping” but obviously made no mention of
stickybeaks with drones or spurned lovers posting
very private images across social media.
“Privacy law used to worry about the government.
Now it’s people on Facebook and Twitter,” Professor
Williams says.
It’s one of many examples that led the State
Government and Law Society of South Australia in
2010 to unite with the University of Adelaide to create
the Law Reform Institute. With Professor Williams as
Director, the Institute’s brief is to “help modernise,
simplify and consolidate laws and the administration
of the justice system and, in doing so, improve
access to justice for the community”.
The Institute is tackling its task with a small team
and the advice of what Professor Williams calls “a
spectacularly good” advisory committee, including
judges, and his colleague, labour lawyer and former
Dean of the University’s Law School, Professor
Rosemary Owens AO.
And an enormous, important, endless task it is. As
Professor Williams says, “There are lots of areas
where the law simply runs out.” Like succession law,
which dates from an age before complex blended
families. “IVF did not exist when many basic principles
were developed,” he says. “As for social media, until
recently the State Evidence Act did not refer to modern
online communications but it had telegrams covered.”
The State’s statutes are equally blind to gender
diversity and the existence, let alone rights and
needs, of all the South Australians collectively
covered by LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transsexual, intersex, queer). As the Law Reform
Institute outlines, “many South Australian laws still
include references to ‘spouse’, ‘husband’, ‘wife’
and ‘marriage-like relationship’, and generally
exclude same-sex couples, or couples involving
gender-diverse people”. The wording of