Page 411 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 February 2013
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their families that make the education system work to their full advantage. It fails to contemplate the question of why the ACT has more students attending non-government schools by comparison to any other jurisdiction, and by a long mark.
The Chief Minister’s media release talks about the improvement in clearance rates for civil matters in the ACT Supreme Court. That was one little fleck of gold. It fails to talk about the formal complaint made to the Attorney-General by the Bar Association about delays in the delivery of reserved judgements in the ACT Supreme Court. It fails to acknowledge the frustration and cost to parties whose matters, in some cases, are waiting years to see judgements delivered. It fails to talk about the need to recruit a temporary judge to give other judges time off from the bench to clear that backlog. It fails to acknowledge the call of the legal profession for a fifth, full-time, Supreme Court judge instead of a string of temporary arrangements which are like aspirin, providing only temporary pain relief. Perhaps it is time for the patient—in this case Mr Corbell—to see and listen to the doctor—the legal profession—and discover a cure for the affliction facing the delivery of justice services in the ACT. I would like to drill down into some of those.
The delays in court decisions are due in part either to a lack of resources or to gross inefficiencies in the administrative process and bureaucratic oversight. An indicator of this is the level of cost recovery for civil matters. In the ACT Supreme Court, for example, the cost recovery for the ACT is just shy of 20 per cent, whereas in other jurisdictions it is substantially higher. In New South Wales, for example, almost 38 per cent of costs are recovered, and in South Australia it is 38 per cent. In the Magistrates Court it is even less, at five per cent. For every other jurisdiction it is higher—as much as 37 per cent for cost recovery in Tasmania. That is a small jurisdiction.
Net real recurrent expenditure on criminal matters in the ACT Supreme Court has increased by 30 per cent compared to nine per cent nationally over the last five years. In the Magistrates Court these figures are 22 per cent and 13 per cent respectively. In civil matters the comparison is less stark, but in the Supreme Court the cost has increased by 35 per cent compared to a national increase of 24 per cent. In the Magistrates Court the ACT outperformed the national total, increasing by only seven per cent compared to 18 per cent.
Another indicator is the number of judicial officers engaged in the courts. The Supreme Court has 1.4 judicial officers per 100,000 head of population, which is pretty much on par with the national average, which is 1.2. However, a comparable jurisdiction in terms of population, the Northern Territory, has 3.6 judicial officers per 100,000 head of population. The Magistrates Court in the ACT has 1.6 officers per 100,000 head of population compared to 1.8 nationally and 6.2 in the Northern Territory.
Yet another indicator of court effectiveness is case backlogs. For criminal matters in the ACT Supreme Court, almost 24 per cent of appeal cases were more than 12 months old, by far the worst in the country. For non-appeal matters the ROGS indicates equally poor performance figures, with over 42 per cent of cases more than 12 months old and more than 16 per cent of cases extending over more than two years.
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