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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2222 ..

MR STANHOPE: I only need two minutes.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: We will give you 10 minutes. If you only take two minutes I am sure the Assembly will appreciate it.

MR STANHOPE: I will not take 10 minutes. I will be brief. There is one issue that I want to raise that I had intended to raise at estimates. I will take this opportunity now. It arises to some extent out of the fact that the Chief Magistrate found it necessary to take unto himself that role of Children's Court magistrate. I want to air this issue just to see whether the Attorney has a response, or perhaps to begin some thinking on it. It has intrigued me that the Chief Magistrate, as I understand it, takes unto himself the role of president of all the tribunals that have been established to deal with a range of issues at the court, such as the Mental Health Tribunal, the Discrimination Tribunal and a range of others. I do wonder whether it is in the interests of the efficiency of the tribunals and the court for the Chief Magistrate to so involve himself.

Ms Carnell: You tell him.

MR STANHOPE: I am doing it now through this process.

Mr Humphries: She means the Chief Magistrate.

MR STANHOPE: I am raising this as an issue. I think there is a significant policy issue here. I am not wishing to interfere with the separation of powers, but we have structured the court and this is relevant. The Chief Magistrate is now the Children's Court magistrate, the manager of the magistrates courts, and president of every single tribunal I think that we have ever established. I am raising this as something that I have noticed and that I wonder about. I guess I am foreshadowing a need for us to look at the efficiency of our courts. I am suggesting nothing about anybody here, but something that has occurred to me is whether or not that is the best structure.

I initiate this for the purposes of debate. It is a bit of lateral thinking. I believe there is an issue here in terms of the specialisation that we might wish to engender in the court system. I wonder whether or not the court and tribunal system might be structured in some other way so as to allow a spread of responsibilities throughout the tribunals. If we could allow other magistrates the opportunity to chair tribunals we might be doing a favour to the system as a whole.

There is one other thing that I will raise now because it continues to cause me some concern. I refer to the Government's decision to insist that people who have been detained against their own wishes because of a perceived mental illness be required to appear only before a tribunal by video. I wonder whether or not any measure has been taken through the budget to allow for video conferencing equipment to be installed at the Canberra Hospital. Have you made some budget allocation for the installation of video equipment? How is the video conferencing equipment going? I continue to register my protest at the fact that people with a mental disability do not have a discretion as to whether or not they can appear in person before a mental health tribunal. I think this is a very significant civil rights and human rights issue, and I raise it again.

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