Page 1483 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The report notes a number of things I want to comment on. It does, among other things, of course, highlight the extent of Commonwealth neglect of our court system, which I have already referred to. It says:
The Territory courts have been under-resourced for a number of years.
It also says - and this is a point particularly relevant to anybody who has worked in the court system:
The accommodation, especially for the Magistrates Court, is quite inadequate. That results in additional costs for the court and for litigants, and confusion for the public. Inadequate attention has been given to the management structures for the courts.
I can only say to that comment: Hear, hear! I recall on occasions, when I was a solicitor in this city, having to attend a particular court at 10 o'clock, arriving at one of the venues for an ACT Magistrates Court or Federal or other court and discovering that I was at the wrong location. I discovered that there were other places where such matters as that in which I was involved took place. Of course, that is a continuing problem while we have a court system spread out over a large number of locations. I fully support measures that would alleviate that particular problem.
As this paper makes clear, the solutions are not necessarily just in building better buildings in which to house or collocate particular courts and their associated offices. The answers also lie in a better organisation of court structures in the Territory, such that the lack of smooth flow between, say, the Magistrates Court and the Supreme Court is mitigated as much as possible.
I have heard, I think, that the NRMA, as a major litigant effectively in the ACT, makes the comment that the lack of a district court type function in the ACT is a serious problem. There is the District Court in New South Wales and there are county courts in Victoria and, I think, South Australia - that sort of court structure which is intermediate between the Supreme Court and the Magistrates Court. It is a level of court structure which is of intermediate cost to litigants but with sufficient jurisdiction to deal with large sums of money such that there is less of a problem with having to go to the full cost, expense and time necessitated by an action in the Supreme Court. Obviously for litigants in certain categories of case, it would be important to have a structure like that. It may be that the process outlined by Mr Curtis would be a valuable way of progressing some addressing of that problem; in other words, creating some capacity to offer a district court type function in the ACT without necessarily having to appoint judges of a district court.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .