Page 1094 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010
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The bill also amends the ACAT Act so that there is only one merits review in relation to planning appeals and removes the additional internal review process within the ACAT in respect of decisions under the Heritage Act, the Planning and Development Act and the Tree Protection Act. Appeals to the Supreme Court will be confined to questions of law, rather than law and fact, from the original decision of the ACAT. This restricts the number of occasions on which a party may canvass the merits of a decision rather than the legal basis on which the decision was made.
These amendments restore the position relating to appeals in relation to land, planning and environment matters that existed in the AAT before the commencement of the ACAT Act. These amendments are intended to ensure certainty in relation to reviews of this kind consistent with section 22P of the ACAT Act, which provides that the tribunal must decide applications under these acts within 120 days after the day the application is made.
Other amendments to the ACAT Act clarify who can be added as a party, the time for lodging applications for review and the tribunal’s power to make a costs order. Amendments are introduced that clarify that the tribunal may only join a person who could have been a party to a proceeding under an authorising law. In addition, where the tribunal considers that an application under land, planning and environment legislation is frivolous and vexatious, the tribunal may make an order for reasonable costs other than holding costs. Again, these amendments are to ensure certainty in relation to these reviews.
The ACAT Act is also amended to clarify that the tribunal cannot prescribe a longer time to do a thing where a law giving jurisdiction to the tribunal provides that it may not extend the time for doing that thing. Finally, the ACAT Act is amended to exclude orders of a procedural nature, for example, a decision to adjourn, from the requirement to provide a written statement of reasons. The amendment does not exclude the giving of reasons for substantive matters, such as a refusal on an application to join an action, or prevent the tribunal from giving reasons where it considers it appropriate to do so.
In addition to the ACAT amendments, the bill amends a range of ACAT legislation in response to developments in the national forums of SCAG and COAG to achieve national consistency. Amendments to both the Magistrates Court Act and the Supreme Court Act implement a SCAG initiative to allow for the formal exchange of judicial officers between state and territory courts. The amendments are based on the SCAG model provisions and provide identical judicial exchange arrangements between the states and territories and the ACT magistrates and supreme courts.
Once passed, the bill will provide for arrangements in both courts whereby the Attorneys-General of participating states and territories may enter into arrangements for the temporary transfer of judicial officers between courts, ACT courts and corresponding courts. These arrangements may not exceed six months, and judicial officers participating in the exchange are taken to be officers of the receiving court for all purposes, with particular exceptions relating to remuneration, pensions, superannuation and suspension or removal from office. The judicial officer’s home
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