Page 157 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (11.57), in reply: I thank members for their support. It is most fitting that this motion will go through with, apparently, the unanimous support of the Assembly, and perhaps also appropriate that this will be the first item of executive business of the Second Assembly, which was opened by the serving Chief Justice of the ACT Supreme Court. Members were sworn in by or affirmed their allegiance before the serving Chief Justice of the ACT Supreme Court. The relationship of equality in the constitutional arrangements of the legislature and the executive, and the appropriate relations between the two, was symbolised at the opening of the Assembly when the Chief Justice witnessed our affirmation or oath. This first resolution, which is setting up the judicial structure of this Territory as a co-equal partner in the constitutional arrangements, follows.
It is a milestone in the constitutional arrangements of the ACT, as Mr Humphries correctly pointed out, and it is also significant that we are now the only jurisdiction in Australia, apart from the Commonwealth, where the reality of the independence of the judiciary is recognised within the law. In other parts of Australia, while as a matter of fact and practice the independence of the judiciary is recognised, and no-one could contemplate the parliament or the executive attacking or assaulting the judiciary, it is a matter of convention rather than law; and sadly, in Australia, we have seen that constitutional conventions are not always observed. Things that are assumed to be the case are not always the case, and we saw that in 1975.
What we are saying here is that the independence of the judiciary is an important principle, and we as an Assembly, starting our Second Assembly and starting perhaps with a fresh page - we are going very well so far - are prepared to entrench within our constitution the important principle of the independence of the judiciary. I thank all members for their support.
I should make some reference to the financial arrangements which were alluded to by Mr Humphries in his remarks. He referred, as did Mr Moore, to the police arrangements. The Government, when in opposition, had been critical of the way in which that police arrangement was drafted. I think the incident at the Indonesian Embassy and who was responsible for what highlighted that, as well as some of the financial problems.
Mr Humphries, there will not be a contract with the Commonwealth in relation to the courts as there was with the police. More appropriate was the example of the transfer of the Director of Public Prosecutions Office which occurred on 1 July of last year. The Territory had made some assumptions and had been told certain things by the Commonwealth about what it would cost to run the office. When we assumed responsibility for the office we found that it had been rather woefully underfunded in recent years, that its stocks of computers had been allowed to run down, and that its staffing arrangements had been somewhat run down and had been bolstered only by additional Commonwealth officers on secondment to the ACT office.
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