Page 3566 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 September 1990
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Mr Speaker, the Opposition will not take up much time of the house this afternoon in commenting on the Curtis report because we raised a matter of public importance on the first sitting day of this week on this very issue.
The concern of the Opposition, then stated and reiterated this afternoon, is that, while the Curtis report makes some very positive suggestions in respect of procedural reforms for the courts, we have real reservations about proposals for structural reform. I would like at this stage to join the Attorney in putting on record the Opposition's thanks for the work that Mr Curtis has done, particularly in respect of the procedural reforms where he has had something of a free hand and has come up with some very positive suggestions which I am sure will be referred to as the reforms emerging from the Curtis report.
In respect of the structural change, however, the Opposition is concerned that perhaps these should not be referred to as the Curtis reforms; they are very much the Collaery reforms. Mr Curtis, in his brief, was specifically directed to look at a unified court structure. The consultant brief says:
By "unified court structure", the Attorney-General has in mind a structure that would consist of two complementary parts: (1) a Supreme Court dedicated to the hearing of appeals, important first instance matters, and matters that for constitutional or other reasons could only be heard by the Supreme Court; and (2) a lower court (which might be styled the Canberra Court) that would amalgamate the jurisdictions of the Magistrates Court, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (and possibly the jurisdiction of other determinative/adjudicative bodies such as the Credit Tribunal and the Parole Board).
So, Mr Speaker, on that fundamental structural reform, the so-called unified court structure, Mr Curtis was not given a free hand. He was not, in effect, asked what would be the best model for reform of the Canberra courts. He was told to report on this type of reform. It is on that preliminary point that the Opposition parts company with the Government.
I welcome the remarks that Mr Collaery made that indicated that the Government is not locked in to any definite model for reform. I am pleased to hear that. I hope that the process of consultation, debate and discussion on this issue that the Attorney has outlined this afternoon, that will involve the community and the profession and that may at some stage involve the Community Law Reform Committee - we would favour it being referred to the Community Law Reform Committee at an early stage - will focus on the question of what is the appropriate structure for courts in Canberra, not the question of how we implement the Collaery model, the so-called unified court structure.
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