Page 4949 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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should be a lot higher next time around. But it is good to see that at least the courts are getting onto collecting unpaid fines. The revenue area under program 12 of the Consolidated Fund has a lot of scope for improvement, cost efficiency and making full use of the user pays principle in an area where it is very fair and proper for it to be applied.
MR COLLAERY (9.21): I acknowledge Mr Stefaniak's comments. I do not disagree with them. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Government has not made a proper provision, in my view, for the development and forward planning of a legal precinct so that the spread out Magistrates Court can be brought into a proper mode of operation. The funding of the Magistrates Court should be adjusted to acknowledge the fact that extensive reviews will be required shortly after the Supreme Court comes across, no later than July of next year, when decisions on the library and on a number of jointly shared assets need to be looked at.
It is our view that, in this appropriation, the Government has appropriated no moneys for an ACT interpreter-translator court language service. The reviews that we discussed in this house yesterday reveal that the ACT is one of the deficient jurisdictions in Australia that have not established, apart from the Federal telephone interpreter service, a court servicing translator-interpreter service as has been done in Victoria, which has set a very high standard and a good model in terms of social justice, access and equity. There has been no provision in this budget for that matter.
I believe that the Government needs to recognise that, with the laws passed yesterday, there will be increasing pressure, as I have heard already today, for this Territory to join the other responsible jurisdictions and to fund, in its administration of justice allocation, a developmental program so that we have a proper language service that is available to the courts, the court officials and other people who would use it. Some services would be provided, of course, on a user pays basis, some on the basis of access and equity, and some, of course, under the international conventions that require us to provide free of charge interpreter-translator services to those in the criminal legal circuit.
That is an important challenge not mentioned in the ACT budget and not funded. It is a matter that the Alliance Government was looking at, and it was a matter that the TAFE itself had started work on, via an interesting seminar held last year. In that seminar, the beginnings of developmental work for the establishment of such a service was mentioned. It certainly will be an election pledge of the Residents Rally.
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