Page 3488 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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process improvements, electronic filing and a web portal for practitioners, and improved integration and data sharing between various justice agencies and stakeholders, such as Policing, Corrective Services and the DPP, along with the courts. This is critical to making better case management work in our courts.
The blitz itself, as members would know, has been extremely successful. Out of the 93 civil matters listed in the first six-week period of the blitz, 45 matters settled, 13 were completed, five were vacated, two were adjourned, one was sent to a court referee, with only 27 not being reached. Out of the 40 criminal matters listed in the first week of the blitz, 21 were resolved with a plea of guilty, six were discontinued and four were vacated. The remaining nine were heard and decisions reserved, of which three have already been delivered.
Reducing the backlog is about providing better access to justice. It is designed to ensure the court can start a new case management system, including the implementation of the docket system, with a clean slate. I am very pleased with the work that my directorate has undertaken, in concert with the legal profession and the courts, to achieve these excellent results. I thank them all for their efforts.
It is worth highlighting—and I know this is a matter that has come up in commentary this evening as well—that currently the ACT Supreme Court, when it comes to fees, is the third cheapest court in Australia to run a one-day civil trial as a corporation. This indicates that there is scope for increasing fees without restricting access to justice. Changes made to court fees reflect the fact that there needs to be a discipline on the allocation of court time when it comes to the conduct of civil matters and to focus the parties’ attention on the efficient use of the court’s time. I am pleased that these reforms are going to assist the court in the management of its workload as well.
Can I turn now to the police and emergency services side of the Justice and Community Safety portfolio. There are some significant ongoing investments in the community safety side of the portfolio. The government provided $3.96 million in the last budget for phase 1 of the ESA station upgrade and relocation strategy, making sure that our fire and ambulance stations are in the right locations to provide improved coverage, improved fire and ambulance cover, for the citizens of Canberra. As a result of that work, three sites were investigated and planning has commenced. Those are at Charnwood, Aranda and Calwell—a new combined fire and ambulance station at Charnwood, combined fire and ambulance at Aranda and a new fire station at Calwell.
We received, overall, very positive feedback on this project. As a result the government is now in a position to commit to the construction of a new ambulance and fire station in Charnwood. For the first time, residents in west Belconnen will get a dedicated ambulance service in their district. People who live in west Macgregor, Dunlop, Fraser, Charnwood and Holt are going to get better services from their ambulance service in particular because of the location of a dedicated ambulance service and additional ambulance crew in the west Belconnen area.
At the same time, the fire station will be relocated from its existing premises into a new combined facility. This is a very important project for west Belconnen. I am proud that it is a Labor government that is delivering better emergency services cover
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