Page 2318 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 June 2013
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should not have come to this. We would have hoped that the government would have listened to the community affected by long delays—key stakeholders on this issue like the Law Society and victims of crime—who have all called for long-term and sustained action to ensure that residents in the ACT receive timely access to justice.
Just on Monday we had another stakeholder calling for a fifth judge. In fact, criminologist David Biles said in an opinion editorial in the Canberra Times:
The appointment of a fifth judge to the Supreme Court is the essential first step to reverse the trend towards ever-increasing remand numbers.
He joins the long list of people calling for a fifth judge. The ACT Law Society expressed their support in a letter to me, the Attorney-General and Mr Rattenbury. The ACT Bar Association has stated they are in strong support of the legislation which they state will “undoubtedly alleviate the pressures and delays currently experienced by the court.”
We have got all of the experts in the field saying this is an essential step. It may not be the only step, but it is an essential step, yet we have a government that wants to double the size of the Assembly apparently for efficiency purposes but does not believe a territory with 360,000 people which has amongst the lowest number of judges in the country should have a fifth judge in order to deal with the backlog and see speedier resolution of cases in the territory.
Our debate follows reports in the Canberra Times that further highlight the issues facing our justice system despite the short-term measures that the government argues it is putting in place. The Canberra Times states that the outstanding caseload of a particular judge includes a number of decisions that have been reserved for longer than 18 months, with one more than four years old. Obviously allowing this judge time away from the bench to address these cases will provide some short-term relief to the pressures on this particular judge. However, in the long term taking one judge away from the bench increases the delays for the cases still to be heard and increases the pressure on the remaining judges. The delays to judgements are well known and they continue to get longer year after year. The Attorney-General is only prepared to take short-term measures that take off some of the pressures for a few months, and the delays continue.
We saw in last month’s Canberra Times an article titled “Murder victim’s family backs fifth judge” where we heard more from victims of crime affected by the long delays. They stated that the delays in the resolution of their court case were a constant aggravation of their grief and horror. Ms Williams, whose closest friend Julie Tattersall was tragically murdered five years ago, is quoted in the article about Mr Corbell’s views on this bill:
My first thought—and it’s a terrible, terrible thing to say—was if he could wear my shoes for a day, and it was somebody in his family ... he would have as many judges as it would take to clear up the system.
The justification put forward by Mr Corbell and Mr Rattenbury about their failure to address this serious issue is well documented. However, criminologist David Biles, as stated in the opinion editorial I quoted earlier, argues:
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