"The testimony of a witness, given on oath in the witness box, cannot ordinarily be supported by evidence that earlier and elsewhere he had said the same thing. In New South Wales in civil proceedings without a jury this principle has been qualified by the Evidence Act, s 14B (enacted by Act No 35 of 1954 s 2 (b)). But that provision has no application either in cases tried before a jury or to the evidence of interested parties. This case, therefore, depends upon purely common law rules which, like so much of the law of evidence, were firmly established only in the nineteenth century. The earlier doctrine, as stated in Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown, Bk. 2, c. 46, was that 'what a witness hath been heard to say at another time may be given in evidence in order either to invalidate or confirm the testimony that he gives in court'. And Gilbert CB took the same view in his Law of Evidence, published in 1756 (p. 153), saying that 'though hearsay be not allowed as direct evidence yet it be in corroboration of a witness's testimony to show that he affirmed the same thing on other occasions and that the witness is still consistent with himself'. But in R. v. Parker (1783) 3 Dougl 242 (99 ER 634) , Buller J. said that the passage in Hawkins 'is not now law' (1783) 3 Dougl, at p 244 (99 ER, at p 635) . And soon thereafter a more strict analysis of probative values showed that, although inconsistent utterances may undermine credibility, mere repetition of a statement does not tend to show it to be true. Thus the rule that prior consistent statements are inadmissible became settled. Here we are concerned with an exception to this rule. It is a recognized exception."