Page 1997 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
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acknowledge that much of the justice to which access is sought is the same justice, whether the Senate or the ACT Assembly is looking at it. Therefore, more work will need to be done at the local level; and the committee hopes that that work will proceed in the near future, notwithstanding our other inquiry taken on yesterday, and will result in some significant changes to the structure of the law, to provide for a greater level of access by citizens of the Territory.
MS SZUTY (11.09): Madam Speaker, members will remember that I became a member of the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs in February of this year. Since that time the committee has produced two reports - firstly, the Crimes (Amendment) Bill report; and, secondly, the report on access to justice in the ACT that is before us today. I recall Mr Moore's comments yesterday about his becoming a member of the Public Accounts Committee and the number of reports the Public Accounts Committee has since produced in this Assembly. I would have to say that this inquiry was one of the hardest and most difficult tasks I could have imagined, because with reform of the legal system we are really looking at the need for fundamental change at not only the ACT level. I certainly concur with many of the comments that Mr Humphries has made about this very profound area which I feel needs quite significant change.
The committee has come up with some 20 recommendations - the most substantive, I believe, encompassing the need for a public campaign to widely disseminate information on the component parts of the legal system in the ACT and the means of access to them. A number of other significant recommendations have been made, and I will mention them just briefly. The committee made recommendations with regard to the structure of the Community Law Reform Committee, the eligibility tests for legal aid, the appointment of queen's counsel, the use of alternative methods of dispute resolution, the establishment of a computerised information system for use in the courts and the production of an information paper by the registrars of the Magistrates Court and the Supreme Court on all aspects of the court system.
The committee, as Mr Humphries also said, has given itself two further tasks to accomplish - firstly, to undertake a separate inquiry into the operation of the legal profession in the ACT; and, secondly, to undertake a separate inquiry into the court system in the ACT, with particular reference to the procedures used in the courts. These will be major tasks in themselves and will, at the very least, enable us to tackle particular questions of access to justice which should be resolvable in the ACT. Further committee recommendations concern the development of legal education in schools, the extension of interpreter services for the courts, legal and community centres and the provision of legal databases in public libraries.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to conclude my comments by addressing the central issue of which people in our society appear to have most difficulty accessing the legal system. The issue was examined by the committee in chapter 4 of our report, and I will refer members to that chapter. The committee heard extensively from representatives of the ACT Council of Social Service, the Welfare Rights and Legal Centre, the Legal Aid Commission and the ACT Attorney-General's Department. The Conflict Resolution Service, while not being represented at the public hearing, also commented on the issue in their submission.
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