Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is insanity, Member for Mallee. Victoria is a mess. It is a complete mess. I do hope that there is a change of government there soon. When you think about that case and you think about what is going on at the moment in New South Wales, our largest populated state, with the protests, with the lack of tough sentencing on people who are doing dreadful things to the police, it is no wonder that people are uptight.

Then you've got the New South Wales government wanting to change a word—wanting to change the title of a magistrate to a judge. I have to say that I believe words are important, and 'magistrate' probably suits the role that they do and the court that they preside over. Whether or not they deserve to be called a judge might be a matter, perhaps, for other legal minds to decide upon. But I don't know why we go down this path, because it then involves us getting up and talking about it.

No doubt the Attorney-General thinks that I've probably just taken up 11 minutes of her life that she's never going to get back, but truly, really, doesn't the New South Wales parliament have better things to do? Don't our courts have better things to do? Doesn't our Commonwealth parliament have better things to do than to be going through the perfunctory bureaucratic nonsense that we are now faced with because these amendments are necessary to ensure so many aspects of the change from magistrate to judge? I just wonder, when we've got everything that's going on in New South Wales at the moment, why the government that runs that state thought that this was a priority. You really have to scratch your head and ask yourself why.

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