Page 3307 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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Mr Speaker, at the moment, the people of Canberra are well served by a Supreme Court which will, until July 1992, remain subject to Commonwealth legislative control, and by a Magistrates Court which has recently had its numbers increased and which deals with matters of a complexity and a financial level of responsibility that are considerably higher than those of magistrates courts in the other States and Territories.
In this Territory we do not have a district or intermediate level court. We see no need for such a court. Our concern is that by adopting a locking in to a uniform court structure we will lose the considerable advantages that we presently enjoy with the Magistrates Court. Merely to turn the magistrates into judges, merely to restyle the magistrates as judges, we see would have no social benefit whatsoever but could, indeed, lead to certain adverse consequences. We raised these when this issue was previously under debate. We raised the question of the level of informality that is presently able to operate in the Magistrates Court.
It may seem trivial; but we raised the issue of the mere styling of a judge, the paraphernalia that goes with the judicial office that tends to alienate the ordinary person appearing in what may be a simple matter before what should be the most open and accessible level of the judiciary. Fortunately, most Australians will have contact with the law, if they have contact at all with the law, only at the level of the Magistrates Court. They will expect and they will, indeed, experience a tribunal - a court that tends to shy away from the formality of a superior court - in which the person presiding, while perhaps wearing a black smock, does not appear bewigged and begowned and does not appear alienated from the community.
The magistrates in this Territory have served the community well by keeping that approach in the Magistrates Court. We see no benefit in turning that workable structure into a system presided over by judges. Our concern is that this proposal would, in truth, amount to no more than creating an intermediate court for the ACT. It is apparent from the Curtis report that Mr Curtis still sees a need for a magistracy. At point 10.14 of his report he indicates that there would still be magistrates and special magistrates who would preside over lower level matters.
The real danger, Mr Speaker, is that all a unified court structure would mean in practice in this Territory is the creation of a district court - the addition of one additional level in the judicial hierarchy and one additional level of complexity. We have raised these criticisms previously. We raise them again today. I am not locking us into a position that in no circumstances ought magistrates ever to vary their style and title or that in no circumstances ought the distinction between the Supreme Court and the Magistrates Court be varied, but it
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