Page 1540 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 2 May 1990
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must be weighed very seriously against the possible advantages. I refer now to the Canberra Times editorial of 10 April 1990. It states:
The Magistrates Court ... is the real workhorse of any court system ... The techniques which, generally, allow for efficient case management ... must remain, and any tendency to increase the level of formality, legalism, or complex pleading must be strongly resisted ...
Similarly, while there may be practical advantages in placing the administrative tribunals under the umbrella of the court, the inquisitorial advantages of administrative tribunals should be retained. And so should the use of tribunal members who are experts in the fields of administration and not necessarily lawyers ...
In the Canberra Times of 1 May, a former senior member of the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal, who regards any proposal to transfer the ACT AAT to a court as a great backward leap, said:
The proposal for the change in the ACT goes in precisely the opposite direction from that in the Commonwealth.
That is in a letter to the editor from Mr John Ballard, who is a former member of the AAT but who has retired and who was a member of Mr Collaery's Residents Rally executive. I do not know whether he has joined the great list of people who have recently resigned. I wonder whether Mr Collaery's ideas are getting any exposure to normal consultation, apart from consultation by the media.
Lastly, the idea of the ACT establishing a five-man court of appeal, consisting of three resident judges and two occasional Federal Court judges, is hardly worth considering, according to the Canberra Times editorial which states:
It would be far better to retain the current arrangements with the Federal Court, where a wide number of judges, with varying expertises, are available ... These outside judges ... bringing to it strong extra expertise and general experience.
I am sure Mr Collaery is much more familiar with the court system than I am. I can only observe what other people have been saying about it. I draw his attention to that, and I am sure that Mr Connolly would be delighted to take that further. The point that I am trying to make as clearly as possible is that there has been clearly a lack of consultation on this matter. It is not enough for Mr Collaery to be seen as the law reformist of the decade if we wind up with a second-rate system. It is much better for the consultation to take advantage of better minds than his, if any exist.
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