Page 4421 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.45): If we accept this amendment the ACT will be in a very anomalous position. It will be the only jurisdiction where multiple judges are involved in disciplinary hearings. Mr Humphries's view is that you need more than one person. He ran through the States where there is more than one person. It is significant that in those States where there is more than one person it is essentially the professional disciplinary tribunal type of structure. I would favour that, and I get the view that there is a majority of support here for that, but I do not think it would be fair to the profession for us to belt through an amendment today to achieve that. I think we need to go through a long process of consultation.
What I am concerned to do is to reduce what I see as an unnecessary imposition on the court's time if we need three judges to decide matters that elsewhere are dealt with by professional panels. There is a significant difference between a Supreme Court judge and a professional panel. That is not to say that if you have three or more members on a professional panel you need to have three judges. Two jurisdictions that are comparable to us, that is, jurisdictions which use judges, not professional panels, are the Northern Territory and Tasmania. The Northern Territory is directly comparable to what we are proposing - that is, a single judge finds the fact and then it goes up to three judges to dispose of the facts. The Tasmanian situation is the Government's earlier favoured option, which is a single judge dealing with the whole matter. The Government would remain of the view that it is unnecessary and overly expensive and overly archaic really, too much of a "lawyers are different" approach, to say that you need three judges to determine everything in a disciplinary matter involving a lawyer. We would like to simplify it somewhat for the moment.
Mr Moore: In the Northern Territory there is an interim method.
MR CONNOLLY: The Northern Territory is the same as us.
Mr Moore: No, they have an interim method. The Northern Territory has an interim method for where there is cancellation or suspension. What you are talking about is being struck off. You are correct about being struck off.
MR CONNOLLY: Yes, the ultimate sanction. We do not have those intermediate procedures, so we are talking about the serious sanction. The point is that they have a single judge fact finding and then three judges to impose the penalty. In Tasmania a single judge is doing it all. We will be going beyond this. I suggest to members that it is a retreat to accept Mr Humphries's amendment because you are going back to saying three judges. I am not confident that the Law Society is as enthusiastic as I am and Independent members are about parting from that model and having a disciplinary board structure. I would suggest that if we lock back into having the three judges always it may be harder to get away from it in the future. I think we should send a signal that we are moving away from that.
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