Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the fine contribution of the member for Blaxland and thank him for his comments, but I also acknowledge the words of the member for Mallee in her contribution and welcome her to the national capital and external territories committee, of which I've been a member for some many years. I was previously Parliamentary Secretary for Territories in the Keating government and have been visiting Norfolk Island since the early 1990s. Of course, Christmas Island and the Cocos islands, about which the member spoke, are also part of my electorate of Lingiari.

Actually, it's not Lingiari anymore; it's now the Northern Territory, but there are two members: one the member for Solomon and one the member for Lingiari—get that for an absurdity! We believe that we should be two seats not one, and we are hoping, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, that you and your party colleagues will see the merit of a piece of legislation, a private member's bill, which was in the Senate today, supported by your National Party colleagues, the Greens and the crossbenchers. It's now only up to the Liberal Party to show that they acknowledge the need to have two seats, as a minimum, for the Northern Territory, and to understand the idiocy of the arrangement that would make us only one seat yet again. I was formerly that single member for the seat of the Northern Territory for 12 years. I understand the difficulties that confront a person wanting to look after an area of 1.4 million square kilometres, plus Christmas and the Cocos islands. In this case, now, it would be the largest electorate in the country, by population, by 25 per cent. How absurd! That's not to, at all, ignore the diverse nature of the Northern Territory population, of which 42 per cent in the seat of Lingiari are Aboriginal people, mostly living in very scattered, remote communities.

This is not the purpose of this bill before us, the Norfolk Island Amendment (Supreme Court) Bill 2020, but, as I was invited to talk about external territories by the previous member, I think it's only appropriate that this House understands that the external territories, the Indian Ocean territories, sit now in the electorate of the Northern Territory, and should remain in, as it was, the seat of Lingiari, divorced from the seat of Solomon, so that we have two seats in the Northern Territory. I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, in your wisdom, will be counselling your colleagues in the Liberal Party party room, and the Prime Minister, most importantly, to support a piece of legislation—which I don't mind if you introduce, quite frankly—which guarantees us a minimum of two seats. Let's just appreciate what this looks like.

Currently, the Constitution guarantees malapportionment. It does that by providing a minimum of five seats for every state and territory—and of course that includes Tasmania. With a population of roughly 530,000, and a bit over twice the size of the Northern Territory, it's guaranteed five members of the House of Representatives. We will go back to one. They're guaranteed 12 senators. We have two. So they will have 17 members of parliament for 530,000 people; we will have three for 250,000. Is that reasonable? I see you're nodding your head—in affirmation? I'm assuming you agree with me, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough.

I want to talk about this bill. As the member for Blaxland has outlined, this bill has as its purpose amending the Norfolk Island Act 1979 to make three changes to the operation of the Norfolk Island Supreme Court. I'm indebted to the Bills Digest and I recommend it to those members of this House who are interested in this subject for, in part, its very brief historical analysis, giving a summary of why we're in the situation that we're in.

The member for Mallee spoke about the importance of normalising the relationship between the Norfolk Island community and the Australian parliament, which has been done as a result of legislation in 2015. This is a bipartisan exercise which has been going on since the mid-1990s. We're now in a position where we've got legislation which would normalise those relationships and set up processes for legislative reforms for Norfolk Island.

An area which was quick to earn concern was the justice system, particularly in relation to family violence, sexual assault and the protection of relevant witnesses. The 2018 amendments to allow the Norfolk Island Supreme Court to empanel juries on the mainland, which this bill seeks to confirm, are one element of the effort to reform Norfolk Island's justice system. As the Bills Digest said:

It sits aside measures that did not require Commonwealth primary legislation, such as the Norfolk Island Legislation Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable People) Ordinance 2018, which made various changes to the criminal justice system in terms of witness protection and sentencing.

The explanatory memorandum to the current bill explains the rationale for the changes which are being made through the provisions allowing the Norfolk Island Supreme Court to exercise its civil or criminal jurisdictions in host jurisdictions and to empanel juries in those possible host jurisdictions, which, as you would imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough, are the states, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. I go back to the explanatory memorandum, which described it in these words:

These provisions were intended to address concerns that there may be cases where holding a criminal trial on Norfolk Island, given its small size and remote location, is not consistent with the interests of justice.

These amendments are important. They redefine 'host jurisdiction' in section 4 of the bill, including all states, the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory, regardless of whether the Commonwealth has an arrangement with the state. They repeal the old definition of 'host jurisdiction'. They confirm that the Commonwealth may enter into arrangements with state governments to enable the Norfolk Island Supreme Court to utilise elements of the state judicial or correctional system in either criminal or civil matters and they confirm that any arrangements with host jurisdictions reached under the current statutory scheme remain in force both in criminal and civil matters.

The bill also addresses appropriately the issue of travel allowances for judges, because, for the travel allowance, judges of the Supreme Court of Norfolk Island are required to be judges of another Commonwealth court. This will fix the arrangements of a separate scheme of travelling allowances with the four or so federal judges who hold the commission of Norfolk Island Supreme Court justice. I commend the bill to the House.

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