Award-winning documentary filmmaker and former ABC producer Anne Delaney has identified a number of contentious areas in a notice of appeal after being convicted of “interviewing” a prisoner. Delaney was convicted on December 22, 2005 in the Brisbane Magistrates Court under s.100 of Queensland’s Corrective Services Act 2000 for having “interviewed” a prisoner, Louise Julie McPhee, at the Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre.

Magistrate Errol Wessling gave Delaney a 12-month $750 good behaviour bond (no conviction was recorded). Delaney had been facing two years jail. The current Queensland government introduced the law.

Delaney was apprehended on April 24 2005. Delaney was carrying out a preliminary discussion with McPhee to ascertain whether there were grounds for a future film on a possible gross miscarriage of justice. During the visit, which lasted 35 minutes before Delaney’s apprehension, Delaney did not conduct a formal interview. There was no notebook, pen or tape recorder.

Delaney maintains that her meeting with McPhee did not give her any information that she was able to use for a story and that she had no intent to publish anything from the meeting. Delaney had also spoken to the Corrective Services department prior to visiting McPhee.

The department’s policy is that media access to a prisoner will not be granted if the purpose of the interview is “to investigate issues related to the offender’s guilt or alleged innocence”.

Lawyers for Delaney argued at the hearing that the way the law operates maximizes “positive media coverage and outcomes of the department’s activities, rather than to provide a truthful and accurate account of the corrective services system and its treatment of prisoners”.

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance has called on Queensland’s Police and Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence to repeal s.100 of the Act. “In a democracy, the operation of justice and the prison system must be open to public scrutiny,” the federal secretary of the Alliance, Christopher Warren said.

“If journalists cannot investigate, question and reveal information in the public interest then democracy is at risk.”

The Alliance knows of at least two other journalists found guilty of an offence under this section the Act.

Queensland’s Corrective Services Department completed a review of the Act in March 2005, a month before Delaney’s apprehension, but despite the history of s.100, there were no findings or recommendations for legislative reform.

Delaney’s appeal seeks for her conviction to be set aside and the charge dismissed.