Page 1294 - Week 04 - Thursday, 8 May 2014
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So I think Mr Wall’s amendment would be unnecessarily restrictive. I think that the five years of legal experience does provide the requisite skills for assessing these kinds of review matters. On that basis, I will not be supporting the amendment put forward today, and I echo the comments that the attorney made earlier.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (12.07): I can assure Mr Wall that the provision that a person who has had at least five years experience as a lawyer is the minimum qualifying provision for someone to be appointed a judge, a magistrate or a special magistrate. Indeed just yesterday the government announced a number of appointments of new special magistrates, a number of whom were drawn from the legal profession but who had no previous judicial officer experience.
The effect of Mr Wall’s amendment is that persons would have to have had previous judicial officer experience to be an adjudicator but you can become a magistrate, a special magistrate or a justice of the Supreme Court with a lesser qualifying requirement. I do not believe the role of an adjudicator is more senior or more significant than the role of a magistrate, a special magistrate, let alone a justice of the Supreme Court. The practicalities of this issue of course are that the minimum qualifying period of five years is just that, a minimum qualifying period.
The government look specifically at the experience, background and attributes of persons that are appointed to these roles, whether it is a magistrate, a special magistrate or, potentially in the future, an adjudicator. We look specifically at their experience. Yes, they must be a lawyer. They must have been a lawyer for five years. But as Mr Rattenbury indicates, they would be expected to have had experience in relevant areas of the law, such as the Sentence Administration Board or the Civil and Administrative Tribunal or in other areas that suitably qualify them.
So Mr Wall can be reassured that this is not a lesser bar or that people who are inappropriately qualified will be able to be appointed adjudicators. The approach for adjudicators is consistent with the requirement for judges and for magistrates
The other observation to make on this matter is that the government looks very closely at all of these appointments and it also undertakes relevant consultation. That ensures that we get suitable persons to perform these roles. If we were to limit it in the way that Mr Wall proposes, then we would have a much smaller pool of people to draw upon as potential adjudicators and it would be much more difficult for the government to find suitably qualified persons who were available to undertake these roles.
There are not many retired judicial officers in Canberra. The government does draw upon the services of retired judicial officers from time to time. Indeed, a number of acting appointments to the Supreme Court, which the government announced yesterday, did include retired judicial officers. But it is a much smaller pool. The role of adjudicator compared to the role of, say, an acting judge of the Supreme Court or acting or special magistrate is considered a more senior role for those retired judicial officers than the role of an adjudicator.
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