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

I have just been having a little chat with Senator Abetz about this amendment. I want to draw Senator Wong’s attention to the fact that I am, at the moment, staying with the wording revision on sheet 5937 and I move:

(1)    Page 22 (after line 23), at the end of the bill, add:

Federal Court of Australia Act 1976

1  At the end of section 34

Add:

        (3)    The Registrar shall cause at least one Registry in each State to be staffed on a full-time basis with the complement of staff in each such Registry to include a full-time Registrar.

The argument here has always been that there should be a registrar, understood to be a full-time registrar, in each state and that includes one in Hobart. To refresh the minds of senators, the problem for Tasmanian senators has been that the court has moved to eliminate the job of registrar in Hobart. We do not accept that and want that job maintained.

The government, I am given to believe and I know Senator Wong will speak on this, was happy for the registrar position to be maintained but not if the word ‘full-time’ was in front of it. I will allow her to put the government’s position on that. The opposition wants that terminology maintained and I can see why, because the Greens have also been committed to keeping the registrar’s position in Hobart on the same basis as the position is maintained in all the other state capitals.

I think Senator Abetz, a while ago, was referring to the extra duties that the registrar in the past has performed with the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal to complement the work that is done in Hobart. I will not go right through the argument we have had in this place before, about maintaining that position in Hobart, suffice to say it is an important part of the functioning of the Federal Court for Tasmanians just the same as it is for Queenslanders, Western Australians or the people of New South Wales.

The decision by the court to abolish the position was strange given that clause 18N of the court legislation says that the district registry must have a district registrar. The way of getting around that was to say: ‘The registrar for Hobart will be the one who is in Melbourne.’ We do not accept that. As far as we are concerned, ought to be a registrar in Hobart. The legal establishment in Tasmania is very keen to see that the registrar’s position is maintained. Senator Abetz, as he said, has raised this a number of times in committees. Frankly, the reasoning for abolishing the registrar’s position in Hobart simply has not been validated and the Federal Court should maintain that position. So the amendment is as circulated on sheet 5937 revised 2.