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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (15 February) . . Page.. 24 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

comment on the Bill. As with the previous proposal, the Opposition is happy to support these amendments. The Bill's principal purpose is to amend various Acts relating to the Credit Tribunal, the Discrimination Tribunal, the Guardianship and Management of Property Tribunal, the Mental Health Tribunal and the Tenancy Tribunal by providing for standardised provisions relating to their creation, constitution, membership and procedures. The functions and powers of the tribunals remain unchanged. As I indicated previously, to the Opposition this approach seems reasonable, given that it confirms what happens in practice; that is, the Chief Magistrate is president of the various tribunals, other magistrates are made deputy presidents, and persons with qualifications varying according to the needs of the particular tribunal are made members.

These provisions have been extended in relation to some of the tribunals to provide that a lawyer of five years' standing may be appointed as a deputy president. The clerk of the Magistrates Court is made the registrar of each tribunal. The provisions of the Bill setting out the matters to be included in an instrument of appointment do not include the class of membership of non-presidential members. Most of the tribunals have a number of categories of member - presidential, non-presidential, owner representative, tenant representative or as the case may be.

I propose to move small amendments to the Bill, which I will mention now, to make sure that the instrument of appointment has to show to which category of membership a person is appointed; for example, as a consumer representative, an industry representative or a psychiatrist representative. The amendments, I suggest, will enable the Assembly and the community to be assured that any tribunal is, in fact, constituted as required by the legislation. The amendments would, by this simple expedient, remove any doubt as to a member's status. There are circumstances where it could be argued that it is important to justify an appointment of a particular person to a tribunal. As I said, Mr Speaker, I propose to move those amendments, which the Opposition believes to be quite reasonable.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (12.09), in reply: I thank Mr Stanhope for the Opposition's support for the Bill. It is a fairly long Bill, but it does contain some very important tidying up of the provisions dealing with tribunals. Tribunals have become much more fashionable in recent years. They are seen as a flexible, more appropriate means of dispensing justice involving not just sworn officers of the bench but also other people who can appropriately be brought into situations where specialist advice is required, in some cases at least. The balance between the requirements for a formal court structure and the opportunities of flexibility presented by a tribunal is very important for any flexible court system to be able to attain. Updating and modernising the provisions dealing with tribunals has been very important. The process has resulted in some very extensive housekeeping, which is evident in the Bill before the Assembly.

I think that, as a result of this Bill, many of the differences in approach and unnecessary anomalies between the operation of different tribunals will be relieved. One of the obvious ramifications of having different approaches in different tribunals is that those who practise in these courts and who move from one tribunal to another, naturally enough, will find difficulty in understanding the differences if they do not practise regularly in a particular tribunal, and those sorts of differences are quite unnecessary and

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