Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with Senator Abetz’s remarks and disappointment with the response from His Honour Chief Justice Black. I would have expected that at least the options that were available, when His Honour and whomsoever else made the decision to deprive Tasmania of its registrar, would have been canvassed in this response, but they are not. It is as if the concern of the Senate—that there may have been options canvassed and there may have been alternatives looked at—does not exist, but what we have is a statement of claim by His Honour which justifies the decision made but not the clear request for a look at the option to retain the registrar in Tasmania.

As Senator Abetz said, we are a federation. This is the court making the decision, under Chief Justice Black, that Tasmania should be deprived of an entity that is available in the other states. I do not accept that. I absolutely join Senator Abetz in saying in this chamber that the court should reconsider this matter, maintain the registrar and look at the other options available to it in making financial adjustments if necessary. Maybe His Honour felt it was inappropriate, but there is no request canvassed anywhere in this response to look at funding alternatives.

Indeed, in the last sentence of Chief Justice Black’s response, he says:

Finally, I would like to say the commitment shown to our work in Tasmania by Justices Heerey, Marshall and Middleton—and I would like to think by myself—should leave no room for any concern that the Federal Court regards its presence in that State of our federation—

that is, Tasmania—

to be in the slightest degree less important than its presence elsewhere.

Who does His Honour think we are? He is depriving Tasmania of the registrar but says that should not, in the slightest degree, show Tasmania as less important than elsewhere. I fail to see the logic of that or, indeed, the common sense of that. This is way short of what I would have expected would be a response from His Honour to the Senate on this matter.

His Honour said the matter was not debated in the Senate but that due consideration was given, but I might shoot this one back to His Honour: where was this matter debated in the public arena in Tasmania? I presume there were debates on the matter behind closed doors before it was settled by the court, but, if we are going to seek public debate on this matter, let’s have it. Senator Abetz and I, and other senators present, would happily join in a public meeting to debate the matter if His Honour would care to take that invitation, in Hobart or Launceston. I will certainly be there if he would care to do just that and extend the potential for debate about this matter to the fullest before it is finally settled.

His Honour says, as Senator Abetz pointed out, that the Federal Court’s disposition rate in Tasmania is exceptionally good. He said:

We have about 50 filings a year in Tasmania and the average time taken from filing to final disposition over the past few years is six to eight months. I doubt whether any court in the country could beat this.

There is His Honour saying that you will not get a better arrangement for disposition of court matters than you get in Tasmania, but Tasmania is the only place we are going to deprive of a registrar. I would have thought that his argument is a cogent one for keeping the registrar right where he is. His Honour goes on to say:

I would also draw attention to the fact that the disposition rate of 95 per cent of all applications finalised within 18 months is even better than the Federal Court’s national average.

Then, curiously enough, he says:

I do not expect these excellent figures to change, other than to improve.

So you take the registrar away, you have the registry done from Melbourne and he predicts that you are going to get a better outcome. Really? I do not understand the logic of that argument. I do not accept it as a logical argument to be entertained in this chamber or, I should submit, anywhere else. This is a most unsatisfactory response.

I will write to His Honour to ask that he review this decision for, amongst other reasons, the reasons stated in his letter, which I have quoted, show an exceptional performance by the court in Tasmania, which is an argument that it should not be changed.

The position I take on this matter, as a Tasmanian senator, is not changed in any way—in fact, it is strengthened—by this response from the Chief Justice. The very disappointing aspect of this letter is of course the determinant one, which is His Honour failing to change the point of view and, we may presume from this, the decision to deprive Tasmania of its registrar. That is not good enough. His Honour, I believe, ought to reconsider and along the way to at least test public feeling on the excellent performance of the court with its registrar in Hobart.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If you want to find savings, then look at the much bigger expenditures of the bigger mainland states to find that saving; do not rob Tasmania of its excellent, unbeaten performance—according to His Honour—in order to achieve that outcome.