Page 1615 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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confident that the workload will be reduced in the move to the Magistrates Court due to the streamlined procedures of the summary jurisdiction.
This new work can be accommodated within present magistrate staffing levels. Recent changes to the rules allow the registrar to finalise non-contested protection orders. This reform, together with the recruitment of an additional deputy registrar, will free the magistrates to hear matters in the increased summary jurisdiction.
Every Australian jurisdiction has adopted a slightly different way of dealing with this issue. Most jurisdictions use a district court to buffer their supreme courts from all but the most serious trials, such as murder, manslaughter and treason. However, even in those jurisdictions without a district court, measures have been taken to allow a wider range of matters to be dealt with summarily in their Magistrates Court.
For example, in Tasmania the Magistrates Court can impose a sentence of up to 12 months for a first offence, and up to five years for a second or subsequent offence. The Northern Territory Magistrates Court has, in addition to its exclusive summary jurisdiction, compulsory summary disposal for less serious property offences. In the absence of the Assembly’s support for structural reform, the reforms contained in this bill represent the best option to further assist in reducing backlog in the Supreme Court.
As members would know, this bill also gives statutory recognition to the family violence court, which has been a successful specialist list of the Magistrates Court to date. Similarly, the bill establishes in legislation the Galambany court, which provides a culturally relevant sentencing option for eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have offended.
I am aware that other members will be moving amendments to this bill. I have been engaged in discussions with both Mr Rattenbury and Mrs Dunne in relation to the bill. Officers from my department have provided briefings to both members and met with the Law Society and Bar Association. The government remains of the view that its bill is the best legislative option available in the circumstances. However, to progress the bill, the government recognises that it will need to support some amendments.
The amendments that have been put forward propose a DPP discretion in the election of the appropriate court. Based on court figures from 2009-10, assuming the DPP makes an election for summary disposal in all of the affected matters, the amendments should still reduce the workload of the Supreme Court. However, we will have to wait and see whether the DPP election process works in practice.
Some of the amendments put forward lack the clarity and simplicity of the government’s approach and they also have a significant element of uncertainty. Under the government’s proposal, all offences with penalties of five years or less would have been automatically heard in the Magistrates Court, whereas now there is the possibility of the DPP electing for the case to be heard in the Supreme Court. While I have full confidence in the DPP, there will be some matters with penalties of five years or less that he may consider appropriate to be heard in the Supreme Court. Under these amendments, there is a risk of leakage into the Supreme Court because of the natural discontinuity between DPP estimates and actual sentence outcomes.
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