Page 1725 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2016
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be either a magistrate or eligible for appointment as a magistrate; it balances the need to keep the ACAT accessible and informal whilst also reflecting the standing of the position of president as the head of the jurisdiction in the ACT; and it gives exclusive jurisdiction to the ACAT to hear and determine civil disputes for claims of $25,000 or less, which is an increase from the current $10,000 limit. I note that the civil dispute jurisdiction of ACAT has not changed since the inception of the ACAT in 2009. Prior to this, a $10,000 jurisdiction had been in place for the Small Claims Court since 1997.
The bill also contains a number of transitional provisions, including to provide that the current general president is taken to be appointed as the president of the tribunal until the end of their term and to ensure that existing proceedings before the Magistrates Court for an amount that is more than $10,000 and less than $25,000 can be transferred to the ACAT on application by a party to the proceeding and providing a hearing has not begun.
There has been some comment from the Law Society, and they urged that consideration be given to the tribunal being able to award costs. Currently the tribunal is a no-costs jurisdiction. I think that might be something worth looking at in due course. This bill seems to be a logical step forward to reflect the good work the ACAT has been doing, and we will be supporting the bill.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (10.52): This bill reforms the operation of the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal—or ACAT as it is commonly known—in two key ways. Firstly, it increases the civil disputes jurisdiction of the court from $10,000 to $25,000 and, secondly, it changes the appointment requirements for the president of ACAT. To be appointed as president, a person will need to be a magistrate or eligible for appointment as a magistrate.
The government proposed these reforms to the community via a discussion paper and received considerable feedback from stakeholders, primarily from the legal community. My office and I have also had discussions with stakeholders about the reforms, including with Legal Aid, Canberra Community Law, the Bar Association and the Law Society. It would be fair to say that there was not universal agreement, for example, different stakeholders had different views on what was the appropriate monetary limit for ACAT’s civil jurisdiction. I do not believe there was any significant opposition to the reforms, though; just different ideas on what the ideal reforms could be.
In the end I think the government has chosen a good balance of reforms and there are good justifications for the final proposals. It is reasonable to increase the civil jurisdiction to $25,000. Canberra Community Law, for example, supported the increase to $25,000 because it would increase access to justice for people seeking redress in disputes involving amounts that are beyond the current jurisdictional limit but are nevertheless relatively low in quantum.
Their submission included a case study of a client with severe mental health issues who had a number of legal problems including recovering property from her estranged father. The items were most likely worth more than $10,000. However, because the Magistrates Court presented a more difficult forum for an unrepresented
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