Courts Administration Authority

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:11): My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the closure of the Holden Hill and Port Adelaide magistrates courts increase the court backlogs?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations) (15:11): I thank the honourable member for her question. Can I return to what I was explaining before, and that is that the Courts Administration Authority is a rather unique creature in terms of South Australia—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: As I was saying, a rather unique creature, and it is unique because it is not answerable to the Attorney-General. It doesn't even make it is budget submissions directly through the Attorney-General. It has a direct channel to the Treasurer, and it makes its own decisions about how it will allocate its resources.

What has occurred is that the Courts Administration Authority has decided that, in order to manage its affairs, it will streamline its operations, and it is consulting on that as of yesterday. I read a statement issued by the Chief Justice, which is as informative for me as it should be for anyone else who wishes to read it, wherein he explains that they do not believe there will be any shortfall in service delivery, although he acknowledges that some people may have to travel a little further or to a different place.

I am confident that the courts can manage this, as the Chief Justice has said in his statement. I have no reason to doubt the Chief Justice. I have no reason to think he is making it up and, as I mentioned before, we are presently engaged, through the Criminal Justice Reform Council, in the preparation of a series of initiatives to improve the overall efficiency and delivery of service to the public through the criminal justice system. When that documentation is released publicly towards the end of this year, I hope members will see that there are many elements that need to be changed in the system to improve it.

People must understand that the criminal justice system is not just the courts. The courts are simply processing material for which they must rely in their turn on police, on the Director of Public Prosecutions, on the private legal profession, on the Legal Services Commission, on forensics and a whole bunch of other people, all of whom have to work in a cooperative way and in an efficient way to get the service to work as well as it can.

That is what we are on about and, as I said, more about that before the end of the year, but in terms of this particular initiative, I read with care the statement issued by the Chief Justice yesterday. I read him as saying that he was confident that the service delivery would not be impaired, and I have no reason to believe that the Chief Justice, in making that statement, was not telling the public what he believed to be true.