Page 4417 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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SUPREME COURT (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1993
Debate resumed.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.30), in reply: I thank the Opposition for its general support in principle for the Bill. Certainly, the ability to appoint acting judges will provide some additional flexibility to the bench. I note that Mr Humphries has avoided the temptation which is sometimes urged upon us by the Law Society to say that there is a desperate crisis and that we must immediately appoint a fourth permanent resident judge in the ACT. No doubt we will come to that point at some time, but there would be a very substantial additional cost to the community were we to create a fourth permanent judge. The appointment of acting judges does give us some flexibility.
Mr Humphries's point about the need for some caution in ensuring that we have an experienced base of acting judges is well made. It would be our intention that acting judges, by and large, would be persons who have been in judicial office and have retired. I would be very reluctant, given the size of the ACT and the smallness of the profession and the bar here, to go down the path of appointing people from the bar to be acting judges and then go back to the bar. There is real potential for difficulty there if one week counsel is appearing before court, the following week is sitting on the court, and then the week after that is back as counsel.
Mr Humphries noted the appointment of the Master. This is a very important provision. It allows the court to retain the services of Mr Hogan who has done a remarkably good job since his appointment. The comment Mr Humphries made about the fact that our waiting lists are comparatively good in the ACT and compare favourably with other larger States is, by and large, a tribute to the work that has been done by Mr Hogan since he has been Master. He has done a remarkable job in taking hold of the civil lists and imposing some order in what was once not that orderly a list, and ensuring that matters are speeded up and do not sit on the court list for years and years with no action being taken.
It might be appropriate at this stage to foreshadow the Government's view on Mr Humphries's amendment which goes to the issue of the procedure in the court in disciplining solicitors. The strong view of the Law Society is that, in effect, there ought to be no change; that a disciplinary matter involving a member of the legal profession must be heard by three judges. The Government thinks that is inappropriate, that really that is a "lawyers are different" argument. The Government believes that, in the long term, the solution will be some form of tribunal or professional body to look at lawyers. Lawyers who infringed against their code of professional conduct would be dealt with by a professional conduct board made up of their fellow professionals and members of the community, just as we passed this morning provisions that say that osteopaths or pharmacists or whatever who transgress their professional ethics will be dealt with by a disciplinary panel comprising their fellow professionals and members of the community. I do not see why a lawyer who infringes their professional ethics needs to be dealt with by three Supreme Court judges, whereas any other professional tends to be dealt with by an appeal body.
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