Page 3105 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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building; to review the Supreme Court’s case management practices; to progress options for bail reform; to consider the proposal of the DPP for changes to sentence listing, bail, and pre-trial procedures; and to consider options for the appointment of an additional judicial officer—that is, a fifth Supreme Court judge.
So, despite extensive discussion on court structures in the ACT compared to other jurisdictions, including discussions on the role of the district court in other jurisdictions, the working group stops short of recommending the establishment of a district court. Yet Mr Corbell, no doubt inspired by discussions about district courts in other jurisdictions, except small jurisdictions like ours, Tasmania’s and the Northern Territory’s, saw an opportunity to build yet another vanity program. The trouble is that his big new idea is founded on the false premise of saving money.
Mr Corbell also let slip through his fingers a golden opportunity to see what impact a fifth resident Supreme Court judge might have on the output of casework while Justice Gray continues until his retirement. He could have taken up the suggestion of many in the law fraternity that he appoint a fifth justice between now and the time of the retirement of Justice Gray, consider the impact that that would have and then at the time of Justice Gray’s retirement decide whether to continue with the fifth justice or to cut that off. That would have meant much more continuity in the courts and it would have been pretty much a risk-free sort of approach. But, of course, the problem might be that an appointment of a fifth judge might demonstrate that those people who were calling for a fifth judge were right and Mr Corbell was wrong—and we could not possibly have that.
He could have seen what impact this would have on the whole court and the throughput of cases without all the set-up costs of a district court. But, even with this lost opportunity, Mr Corbell’s big new idea flounders on the premise of cost. It flounders because the premise is false. Mr Corbell’s big new idea seeks to relieve pressure on the Supreme Court by increasing pressure on the Magistrates Court by increasing the jurisdictional thresholds. And the pressure on the Magistrates Court will be exacerbated by the fact that two magistrates will be distracted by their dual commission as judges in the district court, thereby reducing the resources available to the busiest court in the territory.
I can imagine where those holders of dual commissions will focus their primary attention. It will be on the higher court. It will be seen as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. There is nothing inherently wrong with that; it is a natural response to the kind of opportunity that Mr Corbell’s big new idea creates for magistrates in the ACT.
Ultimately, the inevitable will happen. The Magistrates Court will be crying out for more resources, the district court will be crying out for more resources and demanding that its virtuality be morphed into reality and, ultimately, the costs will be driven up and we will have a third tier in our court system. There will be inevitability in Mr Archer’s prediction that Mr Corbell’s big new idea will create “further complexity in a criminal justice system that is already too bureaucratic”.
Mr Corbell’s big new idea of a district court is a nonsense. It has no friends. It has no justification. It is ultimately cost inefficient. It is not conducive to the single court
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