Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I find it an extraordinary proposition that a government with a budget the size of the Commonwealth of Australia's can't fill four judges' vacancies. I say that in the context of evidence presented to the Senate inquiry into this bill—which surely, Senator Stoker, you were surprised by—that pointed out that judges of the Federal Circuit Court were dealing with an average of some 330 matters each and pointed out the size of the average document. You'd understand these terms far better than I would. I'm not one of these legal eagles, but I do find the fact that you'd ask an average judge to have 330 cases each—one judge had 600 cases, eight judges had more than 500 cases each, 26 judges had more than 400 cases each and 41 judges had more than 300 matters each. As I say, I'm not claiming to be a lawyer, but it strikes me as an extraordinary amount of work for individual judges. There is surely a very strong case to say that this court is overburdened and that one of the consequences of that for families who are having to face the misery of going before the Federal Circuit Court is that they are having to wait years to have their matters heard. Can you confirm those figures that I've given you? Is it the case?

Secondly, why is the Attorney-General so unwilling to fill these vacancies—which, on my argument, are eight vacancies at the moment—given the extraordinary workload that exists for the judges that are currently sitting? Finally, would this not lead to a situation where we'll get even more resignations, because of the workload pressures on the court itself?