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

That may well be tested because the legislation requires a district registrar of the court for each district registry. The clear intent of this legislation is that there be a registrar for the district registry and that it will not be somewhere else—a role carried out by somebody else. That said, the amendment I have brought forward addresses the position where the Chief Justice of the Federal Court and the court have decided to remove the registrar from the registry in Hobart to, we are told, save potentially $200,000, leaving Tasmania with the only Federal Court registry which does not have a registrar. I earlier indicated the importance of that job. In fact, the minister in her submission corroborated my point by her assertion that the court in Hobart was functioning above par in terms of service to the legal community and, indeed, its clients.

We find that a review team was established by the court to look at what were called, rather pejoratively, the three lesser courts in Hobart, Canberra and Darwin. Of course, the ACT and the Northern Territory are territories, not states, but the ACT’s functions of the registrar have been transferred to Sydney and those of Darwin to Adelaide. What is interesting is that the review undertaken by the court, which looked at the so-called ‘smaller’ registries—that is the term—in Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, was undertaken, as it turns out, by Michael Wall, the New South Wales district registrar, Sydney being the recipient of the functions transferred from Canberra; by Sia Lagos, the Victorian district registrar, and Victoria will receive the registrar’s duties from Hobart; and by Patricia Christie, the South Australian district registrar, and South Australia will receive the duties from the Northern Territory. A coincidence? Yes, perhaps, but what I submit here is that it is nevertheless interesting that the district registrars from the three recipient courts were those who were asked to look at this matter. The district registrar from Hobart was not asked to participate and nor were the district registrars from Queensland or Western Australia.

Four options were put up and the third option was recommended and then accepted by the court. If you look at the third option, it says:

Option 3 is therefore the review team’s preferred model. This option would see all small registries managed by a local Registry Manager (formerly the DCS) and all legal work undertaken by staff in the relevant parent registry. Savings aside, advantages of this arrangement for legal work include the capacity to draw on a greater number of staff and a wider range of skills and expertise. Similarly problems associated with staff absences or planned and unplanned leave are minimised. The arrangement is also consistent with the more contemporary approaches to management structure given that it eliminates a layer of management and achieves a flatter organisational structure. In the longer term it will facilitate a more team-based approach to the management of smaller registries (acknowledging that this already occurs to some extent already). One cost associated with the model would be increased travel costs, resulting from the need for legal staff and the [district registrar] from the parent registry to visit as required.

As a Tasmanian, I find that when you analyse that statement it is saying: we will have a flatter structure administered from Melbourne which flattens Hobart into the structure, and what we will save on the swings we will lose on the roundabouts because there will be increased travel costs.

Indeed, the review team went on to say it:

… understands that, should option 3 be adopted, the [Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s] Registrar/CEO has indicated that the [Administrative Appeals Tribunal] legal/case conferencing work would most likely be undertaken by the [Administrative Appeals Tribunal] in Melbourne—

that is, the work from Tasmania. What we have is a dismantling of very important court and tribunal functions in Tasmania, and I predict more will come if this is permitted to occur. It is a very serious derogation of the court’s responsibility to have a registrar as well as a registry in each of the states. It should not and cannot be allowed to proceed.

I would add, and my colleague Senator Milne will have something to say about this, that this is absolutely opposed by the legal community in Tasmania and, the more that is heard about it, by the Tasmanian community itself. That it will save money is, I think, a false premise. It will actually add to the expense of people travelling to Melbourne and back where they do not have to do that at the moment. It will cause disruption and create costs of all sorts, which come when you have to do business in another state capital rather than within your own state.

The government itself says that the court is working and facilitating the work for citizens at an above-par rate in Hobart and, curiously enough, seems to think that is an argument for dismantling it and transferring its functions to Melbourne.