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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1863 ..

which would assist the court. I also had discussions with the DPP, the Legal Aid Office and several private practitioners, all of whom were pretty keen and pretty happy with the idea.

Currently, the Magistrates Court, at section 375 of the Crimes Act, is able to dispose of indictable matters summarily—that is, matters punishable by more than 12 months imprisonment, matters that are a common law offence or currently an offence punishable by imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years if it relates to money or other property or, in any other case, 10 years. The court can also deal with a matter where the value of the property does not exceed $10,000—unless it is a motor car, in which case it could exceed a lot more.

My understanding, from discussions with the Chief Magistrate, was that this provision was last amended in 1982 or 1983, but he was not exact about that. I also commend to the government that I think it would be sensible to increase the civil jurisdiction from $50,000 to $100,000, indexed to CPI after that so that we would not have to alter it. But that is probably for another day. It is not the subject of my particular bill. Essentially the proposal here is to increase the maximum term of imprisonment a court can give in the Magistrates Court—which is currently two years maximum; courts are restricted to that—to a maximum of five years imprisonment. That is sensible for a number of reasons. Firstly, courts can deal with fairly serious matters by consent. Often the defendant, the prosecution and everyone are happy if it is dealt with in a Magistrates Court because the matter is finalised quickly. The old adage “Justice delayed is justice denied” is very true here. Quite often that is needed.

Magistrates will often comment—you will occasionally see this in the paper—that they sent a matter up to the Supreme Court because they felt that they were restricted to only two years maximum imprisonment or that the accused’s record and the nature of the offence warranted a greater penalty and they felt constrained to do it. That takes a lot more time, there is a lot more angst and additional expense, the police are involved and the defendant might not be particularly happy because they were looking forward to getting the matter finalised and it might take another six months. The matter is basically being done twice because it has been committed for sentence to the Supreme Court.

If everyone agrees, I think it makes eminent sense for the jurisdiction of the Magistrates Court to be increased. I think five years is quite a reasonable figure. I also ran this past the Chief Justice who said that he did not particularly mind. He made the comment to me, which I am sure he will not mind my saying, that magistrates are pretty good, that they do not have a history of abusing their power, indicating very much that they could certainly be trusted with something like this. He said that he did not have a view either way but that he would check with his colleagues. He did that very quickly, and I thank him for that. He got back to me within an hour or so and said that they held the same view—they did not particularly mind either way.

This is a very good step that will probably save a lot of angst, time and money and lead to swifter delivery of justice. Making the maximum term of imprisonment a Magistrates Court can impose five years gives the magistrate the ability, in cases where they do have the power—they feel that two years is too short—to adequately deal with a case. The fine conversely goes up to bring it in line with the five years. Currently it is a maximum fine of $5,000 but that would rise to $10,000, consistent with raising the term from

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