Page 1668 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2011
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Mr Rattenbury. For that reason, as it is the lesser of two evils, the government will be supporting these proposals.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.33): I think we need to put it on the record—and the minister has, to some extent, put it on the record—that we are debating the Courts Legislation Amendment Bill today because the government feels the need to address the backlog in the courts. There are many ways in which the government could address the issue of the backlog in the courts. I think that the minister is correct when he says that there is a need for structural reform. He is pretty miffed that his version of structural reform has been roundly rejected by everybody else in the community. No-one had a good word for the proposal brought forward exactly a year ago today by the minister for a virtual district court and he is miffed about it.
It is true that we in this place will continue to address the issue of reform of the court system in the ACT. It is true that perhaps in 18 months time we will be back here in this place debating structural reform in the ACT court system. But it will be done with the Canberra Liberals on the government benches and the Canberra Liberals leading the debate and taking the Law Society, the Bar Association and the general legal fraternity with them rather than attempting to ride roughshod over them.
There are many approaches that we could take. The government put forward one fatally flawed one and said, “Well, we’ve done our bit.” They have now thrown up their hands. It will be the Canberra Liberals who will lead reform in this matter in the ACT because Simon Corbell has failed to do so. He went to the last election with a policy for a unified court system. But what we came up with last year in the 2010 budget was the absolute antithesis of a unified court system. It was a more disjointed court system than the one that we currently have.
Mr Corbell is correct to say that we have many eminent magistrates who have the capacity to deal with complex matters. But he does not give them the capacity to do so. In this bill he does not give magistrates the capacity to deal with complex matters; he derogates the rights of defendants to a jury trial. The Canberra Liberals are not prepared to lightly legislate away a 700-year-old tradition of a right to a jury trial because Simon Corbell cannot get his act together. We are not prepared to legislate away forever the right to a jury trial because Simon Corbell has not addressed the backlog in the courts.
There will still be a backlog in the courts after this debate today, Madam Assistant Speaker, and that is unfortunate. There will be people who will wait an inordinate length of time before their matters are heard in the Supreme Court. Some of those people will be on remand for long periods of time. I regret that, but in saying that there are rights that are being infringed I am not prepared to legislate away other rights to address that.
Simon Corbell has had five years as Attorney-General to address these matters. The law fraternity in the ACT, the prosecutors, the defending lawyers and prisoners’ rights organisations have been clamouring for reform for all that time and more. He will not lay at the feet of the Canberra Liberals responsibility for his failures. His failures are legion. They are highlighted today by, again, his failure to bring forward reform. His
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