AUSTRALIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Paul Doolan, Melinda Winning, Carly Middleton and Jeff Marhinin, Barkus Doolan Winning
Further Anonymisation of Proceedings In appropriate cases, an application can be made to an Australian court in respect of pro - ceedings for financial or parenting relief under the Family Law Act, to provide further confiden - tiality to the parties. Examples include the fol - lowing applications. • An application can be made to remove the names of the parties from any published court list. • An application can be made to anonymise the names of the parties to the proceedings in any published court list. • In exceptional cases, an application can be made to “close” the court to any person who is not a member of the legal firm involved in the proceedings, a party to litigation, or a witness involved in the case. Such an appli - cation generally needs to be made formally by written application, together with support - ing affidavit explaining the need for further confidentiality or security, and will usually be determined by the relevant trial judge or judicial officer hearing the matter.
ceeding or the identity of children who are the subject of proceedings. Although Australia has an open court system, and media and members of the general public can sit in court during the conduct of parenting proceedings, they can - not then publish or disseminate information in breach of those obligations. By way of example, the Australian media can report the general facts of the case and the ultimate decision, provided that the reporting does not breach any of the identification conditions imposed by the Family Law Act. Decisions made by judges of the Federal Circuit Court and Family Court of Australia Division 1, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Division 2, and Family Court of Western Aus - tralia are regularly published by legal services and on the internet. However, the case names are anonymised, as are any other identifying fea - tures such as the names of most witnesses and the names of the businesses or even cities in which litigants may reside.
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