Page 3317 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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processes right and to get the resources right; and by that I mean the physical facilities within which the system works. I am told, for example, that our magistrates work at the moment in four different locations, none of them suitable for their purpose and all of them buildings that have simply been taken over and used by magistrates because there is no other accommodation available.
Now, to suggest that the provision of adequate facilities ought to be referred to the Community Law Reform Committee is, in my view, getting your thinking wrong, like Mrs Grassby did. I think it is important that the valuable resource represented in the Community Law Reform Committee should be put to the right purpose. Do not get it bogged down in matters on which it is not expert and on which perhaps it has nothing particular to say when, at the same time, there are aspects that have to do with the legal system that they should properly be looking at and that they should be devoting their expertise to. So I think, again, we need to get our thinking straight, and I am not too sure that the Opposition, in putting forward this motion, has really done that.
If we were to follow the logic of Mr Connolly's view, every major issue to be focused on by this Government, legal or not - if it was in any way associated with the law - would have to be channelled through the committee. I do not see that; there is no logic to that at all. Notwithstanding their expertise, I think that there is a workload that this committee can handle and we should make sure that they get the right work, not flood them with things that are really quite irrelevant to their purpose.
The other thing that I wanted to comment on, Mr Speaker, was the implication in Mr Connolly's so-called matter of public importance that there is not any consultation going on. Well, that is rubbish. There is a responsible process of consultation with the community going on, on this issue, and the important thing, in my view, particularly having in mind the things that Mrs Grassby said, is that the community should be involved.
The community should be aware of the processes that we are going through. The community should be aware of the consequences of change in the legal system. I think that is far more important than having the Community Law Reform Committee bogged down in matters of this kind.
The Government, Mr Speaker, has not yet developed its final position on any of the matters canvassed in the Curtis report. We are open to input from anybody who cares to make a comment on it. All of those issues are up for discussion, both in the community and in this chamber, and of course it will come before the Assembly eventually. It is only when there has been full community consultation that the Government will develop its position on the various aspects of Mr Curtis' proposals.
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