Page 3132 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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But the real question, I believe, is this: are those reforms sufficient? Will some changes to bail, a review of bail applications, and lifting the civil jurisdiction of the Magistrates Court be sufficient to deal with the fundamental workload problems that our Supreme Court faces? I am not convinced that they will be sufficient. When you look at the range of matters that are coming before our justices—bail, review of bail and matters between $50,000 and up to $100,000 in the civil jurisdiction—whilst certainly not a small number, they do not compose the most significant parts of the Supreme Court’s workload. They simply do not.
Whilst I believe it is desirable that these relatively straightforward matters should be dealt with in a lower court—this is why the government has adopted this approach—I am not convinced that it will address the fundamental structural problems we see in the Supreme Court at this time.
I think it is incumbent on those who say that this is the solution to demonstrate with confidence that it will solve the workload problem. Otherwise, Mr Assistant Speaker, it will just make it worse. It will prolong the problems, the waiting lists and the delays in hearing trials in the Supreme Court. I do not want to see that happen. I do not want to adopt a half-hearted solution, only to have to put off the pain for another 12 or 18 months until we really fundamentally understand that we need some fairly significant report on the operations of our courts. That is the issue that all members in this place will have to come to grips with.
The government is consulting with the legal profession and other interested stakeholders at this time. I have held a detailed roundtable with representatives of the Bar Association and the Law Society. I think there is clearly some agreement that there is a need to change the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Once you reach that conclusion, the question then becomes: where do those matters go? Do they go to the Magistrates Court or do they go to a new court, a district court?
Flowing from that is this that if you are going to have some matters that are currently dealt with in the Supreme Court dealt with in the Magistrates Court does that mean that we are only dealing with matters that can be dealt with summarily or are we dealing with matters that involve jury trials? If we are dealing with matters that involve jury trials, is the Magistrates Court the appropriate place to conduct jury trials? In my view, no, it is not. It is a summary court and it should deal with the low-level garden variety, if you like, matters that are common to all courts of that nature.
But the problem is that jury trials require a higher level of consideration and detail, of judicial oversight and conduct, whilst perhaps not necessarily reaching the threshold to go to the highest court in the territory, the Supreme Court. That is a question that we will need to seriously contemplate.
Mr Assistant Speaker, there are some other parts of the justice portfolio that I will address. I note the usual tirade from the Liberal Party when it comes to the operations of the Alexander Maconochie Centre. The Alexander Maconochie Centre continues to provide a very important service for the community. It has not been without its challenges in operation. That is not unexpected in the context of the development of a
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