Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 77 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

As a former prosecutor, I was amazed that you would put that in as a performance measure. There are sometimes very good reasons for briefs to be rejected, although it does not occur very often. From my experience, the quality is generally excellent, but those things do occur from time to time. Whether you need that as a reporting measure is another point to consider.

The committee trusts that the ACT police and the DPP will develop a performance measure which provides some indication of the quality of hearing briefs sent to the DPP. However, if that is not feasible, why report on it? We made a recommendation in relation to some of the problems the audit showed in relation to the police reports.

Turning now to JACS-the department itself-the committee was somewhat concerned in respect of some of the figures. We noted that JACS provided legal services to the value of approximately $5 million to various other departments and agencies, including this Assembly, in the financial year reported on, and that these services were provided at no cost to the agencies.

The figure for the years reported-2001 and 2002-represented a 28 per cent increase over the previous financial year. We asked questions about that. The department indicated that two factors had produced that-firstly, a shift by agencies from the use of private providers of legal services to the Government Solicitor's Office and, secondly, increased litigation in the health area. The second factor is something which happens from time to time and there is not a huge amount that can be done to foresee that.

We had some concerns in relation to the shift by agencies to using the GSO and made a number of recommendations as a result of that. They were, basically, that the provision of free legal services by JACS to other ACT government agencies be reviewed, to examine whether a service provided free of charge above a certain value-for example $50,000-should be treated as a purchase of service by the recipient agency and reported accordingly.

The other matter was to examine whether, specifically in the case of JACS, some control needs to be imposed on the provision of free legal services-and also to ensure that the recipient agencies provide explanations for any significant variations in the costs in that area. One recommendation in relation to the provision of legal aid-which relates to an annual list of payments made to various barristers in the profession-suggests that it would be handy to include that in an appendix to the report.

Turning to the administration of the law courts, this report provided information on the work of the ACT Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the Magistrates Court. We noted that, whilst detailed workload statistics were provided for the Magistrates Court, which deals with 98 to 99 per cent of the volume going through the total court system, no comparable information was provided for the other courts. Accordingly, we recommended that workload statistics for the ACT Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, similar to those already provided for the ACT Magistrates Court, be provided in future annual reports.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .