Page 3308 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
is a very important question. It is a question on which, I think, the Attorney would have to agree that arguments can be advanced on either side and we ought to have full and open consultation and debate on it before locking into any decision.
At the end of the debate in May, the impression that I gained, and the impression that the Canberra media gained, was that this question would be referred to the Community Law Reform Committee and, as I said before, we welcomed that. The Community Law Reform Committee, as presently structured, is a body that can appropriately reflect the concerns of the community; it is a body which is accessible to the community as a whole. It is not dominated by the profession; it is not dominated by lawyers; it is not a body that is going to come down with a recommendation that would be seen by the community as favouring lawyers. It is a body that could appropriately conduct this debate and come back with a report on all options for reform of the court structure. I stress, Mr Speaker, a report on all options, because at the moment the only material before this community, and the only public utterances of the Government, seem to be locking us into this one structure; this so-called unified court structure.
As I said before, this is often referred to as the New Zealand model because there were certain recommendations made in New Zealand some years ago which led to the distinction between the District Court and the High Court of New Zealand - the equivalent of our Supreme Court - being removed. For some years now, New Zealand has operated in a District Court-High Court structure that does not include a magistracy. It does, however, as I understand, operate with a system of justices of the peace who preside over smaller criminal matters which are now presided over in Australia and the ACT by magistrates, and it does operate with a rather novel Disputes Tribunal, formerly the Small Claims Court, presided over by lay persons rather than lawyers. It is not an appropriate model with which to claim a direct comparison with the Australian Capital Territory. It is a system which, in effect, has been introduced to raise the limit of the District Court which was limited until recently to a financial level of $12,000 in civil litigation.
A reform designed to make the District Court more compatible with the High Court of New Zealand is not a model that definitely ought to be taken as the basis for reform in the ACT. Our structure is entirely different; our tradition of the magistracy here is well entrenched. The Magistrates Court, as I said before, has a very high financial jurisdiction here. It can deal with matters up to $50,000, which is considerably above Magistrates Courts in other parts of Australia, and it is not appropriate to rush into that New Zealand model.
Mr Speaker, of even more concern to the Opposition than the abolition of the Magistrates Court and the turning of the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .