It is a substantial bill that makes important deliberate movements from the Magistrates Court jurisdiction over to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal
Mr President, the Greens cannot and will not support this bill, just as we have never and will never support mandatory minimum sentencing, the undermining of judicial independence.
We have been through a really regrettable process this morning where a bill which passed through the House of Assembly two months ago, with an amendment that was agreed to ...
We have a job here to do. We need to uphold the independence of, and public confidence in, the judiciary.
Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the presence in the Chamber today of Faith Tkalac.
Attorney-General, earlier this year the House of Assembly passed the Justice and Related Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill. Coroner Cooper warned, and the Greens raised this as an issue in the second reading, that the enactment of that bill would result in a doubling of coronial investigations, but you disputed his assessment. Clearly, however, you wouldn't disagree, I'd expect, that it must result in some increased workload. Are you able to listen to my question?
The coronial investigation in the five additional coronial inquests, two of them have recommended the Law Reform Institute and the Attorney‑General consider introducing legislation requiring mandatory training and licensing of all persons using quad bikes within your bailiwick, and that the Law Reform Institute and the Attorney‑General consider legislation to prohibit the carrying of passengers on Type 1 quad bikes and no more than one passenger on Type 2 quad bikes. Will you be investigating and progressing those reforms?
Is it your government's intention that the commissioning base rate at the moment, which is set by the Public Trustee, would be required to be taken up by the public sector? In other words, for people with less than $100,000 the private sector would get 0 per cent commission? How would that work, or are the cases that the government's going to keep but they're going hand out the profit-making ones to the private sector so nothing's coming back to the public?
On the Public Trustee and the comments that you were talking about recently, the acting secretary said 'as we work through the process of responding to the Economic Regulator'. What Tasmanians who are listening don't understand is that the Economic Regulator has done an assessment and has found areas where efficiencies could be gained or where there are costs that are higher in Tasmania than there are in other states.
Minister, the acting Secretary made some comments about indexation for Legal Aid previously. The base grant for Legal Aid in 2023‑24 was set at 1.63 per cent indexation, significantly lower than the 3 per cent of the increase in salaries in the Tasmanian State Service and significantly lower than CPI. I think the acting Secretary has just said that they've been funded now with an indexation commensurate to that provided to the community sector, also insufficient to match our CPI.