Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 2:06:45 to 2:09:39
The committee examines the data used to justify a new court, focusing on the timeliness of small claims and whether increasing resources for existing courts was considered as an alternative.
Topics: Workplace relations, Law reform
Speakers: Senator Paul Scarr, Greg Manning, Simon Duggan
Mr. Manning, when you prepared your briefs, did you take into account the fact that the FCFCOA data with respect to the timeliness of dealing with small claims indicated that on average the time taken for claims under 100,000, which I'm not sure what your definition is of a small claim? Still a significant amount of money. Is that under 100,000?
I think this ratio of confirmation that's our understanding that's what the upper level of that process is.
Okay. So as I understand it, the average to deal with those claims had fallen from 8.7 months to the 3.1 months that Ms. Brayshaw you referred to as the medium. Mr. Manning, in your briefs, did you refer to the fact that the timeliness of dealing with those claims had fallen to a material extent?
Again, it's it's it's a while ago, Senator. I will have to check, I'll take that on notice and add it to that data request I took on notice earlier from you said around the time the timeline to see if that was in there and were able to provide that on notice, Senator.
So my particular concern, Mr. Manning, is to make sure you were using, and I'm sure you're diligent. I'm not in any way saying otherwise, but my main concern is to make sure that you're using the most up-to-date data.
And and my assumption is that if that data is insofar as it's included, we'd be relying on the publicly issued documents of the courts in relation to that particular jurisdiction. I can't tell you as we sit here. I don't I can't recall whether or not in their annual report, for example, they break it down via the different areas of practice or not, but that's what will take on notice and check for you and provide for AWS.
I'm happy for you to take that on notice. Uh Did you provide advice with respect to the option of simply increasing the resources available for dealing with small claims through the existing legal structures? So instead of establishing a new court, maybe providing for the appointment of additional judges or registry services to enable the existing courts to deal with small claims more expeditiously.
So, Senator, we we went through the chronology of uh written advice that's been provided around the issue of fair work dispute resolution system, and there are a large number of briefs that go to that broad issue. So we'll need to take on notice whether any of those briefings, what the range of options and considerations were in those briefings. And we'll need to let you know on notice whether any of those briefs included specifics around an alternative of raising resourcing of the existing court structure.