Page 155 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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I take it that those sorts of views have been canvassed by the Attorney-General in reaching the position that has now been reached. The position that has now been reached is that the ACT Assembly has the power to remove judges in those circumstances, subject to the recommendations of a judicial commission composed of judges or former judges. I think that is an acceptable solution. I have to indicate that I think it would always be appropriate for us, if we manage our own Supreme Court, to have the power ultimately to remove judges in certain limited circumstances. We are not talking about this happening every day, I might say; it is something which needs to be considered on rare occasions, and, hopefully, even rarer occasions in the future.
It is tremendous that this matter has been resolved satisfactorily. I assume that this motion reflects agreement between both the Government - presumably also the Federal Government or its officers - and the judges and magistrates of the ACT. That, I think, is a very solid achievement, and I congratulate the Attorney on it.
There are a couple of questions which I think need to be asked, Madam Speaker, and which I assume, in due course, will become clear to us. There were tremendous problems when the ACT received control of its police force a year or so ago. The Attorney, as shadow Attorney-General, was critical of the then Government with respect to the appearance of the arrangements it had made with the Federal Government about the funding and the financing of the Federal Police. The shadow Attorney-General, as he then was, said that the ACT Assembly ought to have had the power to scrutinise closely the financial agreement between the Commonwealth and the ACT.
There is, at this point, no agreement that I know of to do with the funding of the Supreme Court. Like the Federal Police, funding in the first year will be a relatively simple matter as the Commonwealth appropriation, presumably, is merely transferred, adding perhaps for inflation, to the ACT budget for this coming financial year. Of course, as time goes by there will be considerable argument on to what extent that Commonwealth subvention should continue. There will presumably need to be an agreement between the ACT and the Commonwealth, and there will presumably need to be at least the option of ACT Assembly scrutiny of that agreement. I gather that, given the Attorney's comments before in his former shadow role, he would be very willing to see that agreement exposed to the scrutiny of the Assembly or of some committee of the Assembly.
The question of the entrenchment of the Supreme Court's independence is, of course, a very important factor in this transfer. In fact, it is a very welcome feature of this arrangement that we have here some institutionalisation of that independence of the Supreme Court in a way which does not exist in other jurisdictions. As the Attorney points out, our constitution is effectively the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act, an Act of the Commonwealth Parliament. The Commonwealth Parliament will amend that Act, hopefully, pursuant to this resolution passed today, which will see us in a position of acquiring that control.
Madam Speaker, I think we will also see a situation ensue where we perhaps set a lead for other places in Australia with respect to the entrenchment of the independence of our judiciary. The separation of powers does demand that
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