Page 1613 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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appropriate access to the Supreme Court is retained. As members will be aware, this bill was passed by the Assembly in February this year.
Finally, the Acting Chief Justice and I jointly requested a review of case management practice in the Supreme Court earlier this year. The review is currently underway and is examining listing practices in the Supreme Court as well as considering practices adopted in other jurisdictions. I look forward to the outcomes of the review and their timely adoption by the court.
In the absence of the Assembly’s support for a district court, this bill, combined with the suite of measures already implemented and being implemented, presents the best option available to us at this time to reduce delays in the Supreme Court.
I would just like to, on that point, elaborate a little. Mrs Dunne suggests, “Where is the public interest consideration of the government?” The public interest consideration is timely access to justice in the Supreme Court. It is not in the public interest that defendants and other applicants before the court have to wait protracted periods of time to have their matters heard. That is an overriding public interest consideration in the government’s view and directly engages the rights set out in the ACT Human Rights Act to a fair trial, which includes a right to a trial in a timely period.
The effect of the bill we are debating today will be to increase the summary jurisdiction of the Magistrates Court to include offences with maximum penalties of five years or less. Presently, defendants charged with offences with maximum penalties from two to five years imprisonment may elect to have these matters dealt with summarily in the Magistrates Court or heard on indictment in the Supreme Court. Appeal rights are unaffected by the reforms in this bill. Defendants will still have access to an appeal from the decision of a magistrate to a single judge of the Supreme Court and ultimately to the Full Court of the Supreme Court.
I note that the proposal to increase the summary jurisdiction was put forward by the legal profession itself. The Law Society and the Bar Association proposed an additional requirement to accompany the increased jurisdiction, being a de novo appeal. A de novo appeal would create a right to a full rehearing in the Supreme Court of all criminal matters coming before the Magistrates Court. The government cannot support a rehearing of all Magistrates Court criminal matters. It would simply undermine the government’s attempt to reduce the pressure on the Supreme Court. While this type of appeal appears to work quickly and efficiently in the New South Wales District Court, there can be no guarantee that this experience would be replicated in a superior court of record such as our Supreme Court.
It has been suggested by some stakeholders that the bill limits the right to fair trial by removing the option to elect to have a jury trial in relation to these offences, which under the proposed amendments would be tried by a magistrate. I reject and the government rejects any suggestion that this limits the right to a fair trial. In fact, it supports it by reducing undue delay in bringing matters to trial.
The right to fair trial has a range of components, including right to trial without undue delay, right to a public hearing and equal access to and equality before the courts.
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