Page 1112 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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judges per capita in Australia and is below the Australian average, as some sort of evidence supporting the need for a fifth judge. In actual fact, comparisons in relation to the number of judicial officers per capita are not a relevant consideration.
Evidence that is relevant is the comparative workload of our courts in comparison to civil and criminal lodgements in the superior courts of other Australian jurisdictions. In relation to the overall criminal and civil workload per judicial officer, magistrates and judges included, the ACT has, in fact, the lowest workload per judicial officer of any jurisdiction in the country. It is worth observing that the same report on government services that Mr Seselja refers to also demonstrates that the ACT has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, rate of lodgements for criminal and civil matters of any jurisdiction in the country. So the workload of our judges is lower and the number of matters being lodged in both civil and criminal jurisdictions is lower than most, if not all, jurisdictions in the country.
In order to improve access to justice and reduce delays in the courts, the government undertook significant reforms during its last term of government. These reforms included increasing the jurisdiction of the Magistrates Court in both the civil and criminal areas, bail and judge-alone trial reforms, the establishment of a single registry for the courts, a case management and listing review and support to the Supreme Court for the introduction of its docket case management system. Work continues on a range of other important reforms. Upcoming initiatives include reforming arrangements for handling judicial complaints and creating an industrial magistrates court.
Reform of judicial complaints arrangements is an ACT government election commitment. While the ACT has legislative mechanisms for the establishment of a judicial commission to examine serious complaints, there is currently no legislative framework for dealing with less serious ones. That is why in December last year I released a public discussion paper on this matter. The paper examines options for reform in the ACT, with a focus on the New South Wales and commonwealth models.
The paper also examines commonwealth legislation providing express powers to heads of jurisdiction to manage the workload of judicial officers and ensure appropriate access to health assessments, counselling and judicial education as required. Introducing similar provisions in the ACT would complement an enhanced judicial complaints mechanism. That paper is still open for comment, with submitters asked to make their submissions by the end of March.
An example of cooperation between the court and the government is the government’s support of the Supreme Court’s new docket system. Following the listing review, the Supreme Court announced its intention to implement a docket case management system, a familiar and regular feature of all other supreme courts around the country. Under this system, matters requiring listing for trial and certain other matters are assigned to a docket judge shortly after being lodged. These matters are then managed by that judge until finalisation.
The case management and listing review looked at practices in other jurisdictions, looked at what works and what does not, and looked at how things could be done here
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