Page 1142 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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In Tasmania, for every full-time judicial officer there are 236.71 cases lodged in the Tasmanian courts—that is, in Tasmania judicial officers have 58.34 more cases lodged per judicial officer than in the ACT. In South Australia, for every full-time judicial officer there are 180.71 cases lodged in the South Australian courts—that is, in SA judicial officers have 2.34 more cases lodged per officer than in the ACT.
Does this suggest that the ACT courts are receiving so much additional work that we must run out tomorrow and start engaging new judges? It seems pretty conclusive to me that the answer is to the contrary. It suggests that the ACT Supreme Court has less workload than the four jurisdictions mentioned above.
For balance, I will mention Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory as well. Victoria has 169.94 lodgements per judicial officer—that is 8.43 less than the ACT. Western Australia has 169.44 lodgements per officer—that is 8.93 less than the ACT. Only in the Northern Territory do we see a significant difference from these figures. In the Northern Territory there are 100.96 lodgements per judicial officer—that is, 77.41 less than the ACT.
When the comparative analysis is undertaken, it shows that the ACT Supreme Court’s criminal and civil workload per officer compared to supreme and district courts in other jurisdictions is considerably less than Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania. It is slightly less than South Australia. It is slightly more than Victoria and Western Australia and is clearly more than the Northern Territory.
So what does this mean? Is the workload of the ACT Supreme Court, with four full-time judges and one master, so great that it exceeds all the other Australian jurisdictions? Well, the answer is no. The figures suggest that the ACT workload is less than or similar to most of the jurisdictions, including a comparable small jurisdiction, Tasmania, in case anyone wants to run an argument about the economies of scale and overheads.
There is no reason to start recruiting additional judges—the work just is not there. In fact, compared to last year the number of civil and criminal lodgements per judicial officer in the ACT Supreme Court has decreased from 226 in 2010-11 compared with 178 in 2011-12—that is, the number of lodgements per officer in the ACT Supreme Court is decreasing. Why, if lodgements and therefore workload are decreasing, should we go off and employ more judges?
Employing additional judges is not the answer to the issues facing the court. And what are those issues? In the past, too many minor applications were made to the Supreme Court. An example here are bail appeals and small civil claims. The appointment of a fifth judge would not have solved these issues; it would have fanned the flames; it would have been like pouring petrol onto the fire. The government did not appoint a fifth judge. It dealt with the bail issue; it dealt with the small civil claims issue. Those matters are now being dealt with in the Magistrates Court.
Was the appointment of a fifth judge the silver bullet to this issue? No. Instead of appointing a fifth judge, the government brought sensible propositions to the
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