Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, the Government last week announced the introduction of the
Defamation Legislation Amendment Bill of twenty twenty five to Parliament.
There was so much legislation and so much happening in
Parliament last week that there is a lot of information
to get our heads around now. The Attorney General, Marie
Claire Boothby said that the bill was a much needed
reform to territory defamation law that is going to prevent
(00:22):
our legal system from being overburdened by minor matters and
protect Territorians from unnecessary legal battles over trivial disputes. The
Attorney General Marie Claire booth Me joins me on the line,
good morning to your minister.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Good morning and to your listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Now, why was this Defamation Legislation Amendment Bill introduced?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So, Katie, this is a bit of legislation that has
sort of been kicking around the corridors of Parliament for
quite some time. In fact, it was from about twenty
twenty and I note that Labour didn't bring this forward,
whereas we've picked it up and said, you know what,
this is something that actually could help with this overburdensome
on our courts, which we know is a huge issue.
(01:06):
So to try and avoid like trivial and frivolous legal
disputes happening in our courts, this legislation actually allows for
the real proper defamation claims that to be hurt in
courts only. And it's a bitten technical and probably somewhat
boring in terms of all the aspects of it, but
(01:26):
I can go through some againt.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah. Well, look, I suppose for me, I was surprised
when I saw the release come through because in that
release it said, you know that you're proud to support
a bill that protects the freedom of speech, empowers journalists
to hold public figures accountable, and enhances efficiencies in our
legal system. And I thought, while I was reading it,
I'm not sure how this is going to impact me.
And I'm one of the very people that it's probably
(01:48):
aimed at protecting. So how will it protect freedom of speech?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, and I guess I'll start by saying this is
definitely not legal advice. Katie and few listeners. I'll just
if you do end up in a situation where you
need to make sure you seek some legal advice. But yeah,
you're right, Look, this is about protecting giving extra protections
or defenses for journalists. As an example, this is one
(02:13):
of the elements of the bill. And I'll give you
the example, like let's say you and I ktie, you're
a journalist on air. You might say something that I
deem as defamation about myself as Attorney General. Instead of
me going straight up to the court and putting forward
a complaint, and then you and I end up in
a trial, you and I have to work this out
first together, So it makes it mandatory for a dispute
(02:37):
resolution to occur. Now in that process, what has to
happen is if you can prove that you sourced information
with from the right sources, that it's you know, in
the public interest, and you checked your facts, and you
also gave me a right to comment about it or
a right reply, then that's extra defenses which are now
going to be in law to I guess protect you
(02:58):
from a potential case. And the other part of it,
which is really important, is that you would I would
have to prove that there was serious harm in the
whole defamation you know, commentary. So harm sorry, would be
things like economic loss or a real reputational damage. So
it kind of puts the emphasis back on the complainant
(03:21):
to ensure that they really do have a genuine case
for defamation, because otherwise we'll just end up in the
courts for a long period of time a lot of
he said, She said, So that's a really important part
to be able to protect freedman speech. You know, we
want our journalists to be able to say the things
they need to say about our public figures and other
public interest type matters. But without that, you just you know,
(03:42):
you could end up in court.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Well, look, and I think that it is really important
that we get this right. I guess the other part
of it, though, is are we going to end up
in a situation where you know, people are jumping online,
they're making all sorts of comments about other people, and
then you know, it's the onus is on the complaint
to try and prove that they've been defamed.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Imagine this, right, You have a dispute between a neighbor,
and then that neighbor jumps the line and tells everyone
that the neighbors you know, about personal lie or whatever
they want to say. What we don't want is something
like that, which is a dispute of a trivial nature
to end up in the courts. So between those two parties,
they have to prove, if they end up in court
that they've tried to sort it out. They've had they've
(04:22):
had dispute resolution, that's happened with the mediation, they've had
to prove a trail of paperwork where they've tried to
solve this because, like I said, we don't want those
kinds of matters like private citizens and disputes or reviews
online all going to a court where it could absolutely
be dealt with well before that.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And so why is this needed from a you know,
like in a practical sense, from the court perspective, do
we see a lot of situations across the Northern Territory
where these kinds of things are clogging up the court system.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
We haven't seen a great deal in the Northern Territory yet.
But another point, which is why we wanted to bring
it forward, is that every other state has tightened up
these laws to ensure it doesn't overburden courts around Australia.
And because the Territory didn't have these laws, which is
the reason why we're bringing them in, because it means
that people can actually forum shop around Australia. So if
(05:16):
you're a corporate and you want to, you know, try
and say someone's to faming the corporate brand or the person,
the person within the corporate and they've got big, deep pockets.
They could easily come to the territory and lodge a
case and have it heard here, and you know, that's
not the kind of thing we want to happen here
in the territory either, like it should be happening in
whatever state that you know, the jurisdiction is. So there's
(05:38):
a lot of tightening up. Like I said, it is
quite technical, there's a lot of points about it. But
those examples where we can try and get those disputes
that happen that can happen in court between two people
or between a journalist and someone with a profile, we
want them to be dealt with where possible outside the court. Now,
of course there are going to be some cases that
(05:59):
do end up in court because they're very serious, they
have caused harm, economic loss, reputational damage. Those still will happen,
but this way this just ensures that there's protections to,
you know, remove the frivolous claims. Unless someone is really
serious about putting forward a defamation claim, then this allows
it to not happen.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So how quickly are we expecting these changes to come
into play. Obviously it's all going to go through Parliament first.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, yeah, So it was tabled last week. It will
sit in Parliament for a number of weeks until either
the next sitting or maybe even the sitting after it
depends on how much other legislation we have, because as
you've said, we've got lots coming through and then once
it's debated, it'll go through to the agencies to then
implement and it will happen when it happens, But you know,
(06:48):
we want to try and get it done as soon
as possible and that way we put it to bed
and we you know, have more freedom of speech available
to Territorians now.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Attorney General, we also know that there is obviously quite
an enormous burden on our courts at the moment. When
we spoke to the Law Society of the Northern Territories
President last week, we've spoken about the fact that the
NT courts have revealed that they're experiencing more than twenty
two thousand criminal and domestic violence cases. Well, they're expected
(07:17):
to by the end of twenty four to twenty five
financial year. That's three three hundred and ninety four more
cases than the year prior. This new data that was
released predicts an eighteen percent increase in lodgements compared to
the previous twelve months. It's going to break it, sorry,
a decade long record, I should say, for lower courts.
(07:37):
What do you think that this increase demonstrates.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So, Katie, this is true, and our courts have been
having a lot of pressure on them for a long
time now, but it certainly has been ramped up since
the new laws that we introduced late last year, and
of course we have more laws that are coming. So
we make no apologies for the fact that, you know,
defenders are now being dealt with in our courts and
(08:02):
a lot of them will be reminded and a lot
of them will wait for their trials or court hearing dates,
and some of them will end up incarcerated, you know,
as a sentence. And that's really important. I mean, we've
got those extra five hundred prisoners now that are in
there due to offenders off the streets. We've got our police,
you know, hunting down if you're like high risk offenders
that really shouldn't be on our streets. There was over
(08:24):
one hundred of them that have been arrested, and of
course it is putting pressure on our courts. But at
the same time, you know, we're doing the work within
the court system and the justice system to try and
alleviate this in terms of just getting matters through as
fast as we can. Now it's not a perfect system.
It's bumpy. They're all under pressure. They're working around the
(08:45):
clock to make this as smooth as possible, and it's
not smooth, and that's absolutely true. But what we've done
since coming to government is one recognize the pressures and
we've started to work on that. And I'll give you
a couple of examples of some of the changes that
we've made. Firstly, we found out that the prosecutors in
the DPP they weren't on permanent contracts. They only had
(09:07):
a twelve month contract. So that's a lot of uncertainty
within an area of really important to our justice system
where they just didn't have They didn't whether they're going
to be there the next day or not. So we've
actually made them permanent staff, which allows them to plan
for that certainty and any you know, changes that they
need to make within their area. We also ensured that
(09:28):
Legal Aid had the right amount of funding to be
able to continue their services. As we know last year
in the or larger had some problems, so we had
to ensure that they had the right amount of funding
and the conversations to make sure those levels of funding
for legal services continue. Because we're in the budget process
right now, we want to make sure that for all
the money we invest in police, we also invested into
(09:49):
our justice system, which includes our legal services and of
course also corrections, which is another flow on Kadi. I
was just in the court on Monday watching how it
all plays out, so the second time I've been down
in a matter of months to just watch exactly how
it works. And you can see there that things like
the video links are now operational, and there were many
(10:09):
cases I watched where you know, the person incarcerated was
on the video and so they were able to get
through those matters faster, which is good. I could still
see a lot of challenges and one of the things
that was really obvious was the work between the prosecutors
and the defense lawyers. A lot of that conversation should
have been happening well before they were in front of
(10:30):
a judge and it hadn't been and yet apparently many
many years ago, that used to happen quite regularly, like
they would literally meet up, work out if they had everything.
I mean, is it a situation.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Is it a situation where they're not though, because they
simply don't have the time.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Well, that's part of the resourcing, you know, not being
able to resource the right amount of prosecutors and the
right amount of defense lawyers. Like, there's a lot of
work that goes into these cases and unless you know
those people have the time to prepare that work. Obviously,
see their clients if if it's their defense lawyer, then
work with the prosecution, work with police to make sure
all the information is there to work out you know,
(11:06):
what's going to happen. Are they going to plea a
particular way and once and so ideally once they're in
front of the judge, it's a smooth process, you know,
it just go through the process, the judge will go
through what they need to do. But that hasn't been happening.
So with the right resources, which is the budget stuff
we're working on that will allow that kind of early
process to occur before they get in front of the judge, So.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You're confident that'll have a big impact.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Oh, I think it will. I think the court system's
quite There's a lot of process that goes on and
a lot of moving parts, and I think it's like anything,
if you change a couple of those small things within
a whole process, it makes a big difference. And like
with anything, you know, we'll tweak that. If it's not working,
we'll try something else, and we will also bring forward
legislation to provide those efficiencies with the courts. We're working
(11:54):
on some efficiencies now which will help again free up
those things. Just all the technical stuff like it is
quite boring, pitty it is.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
But look, I think the thing that's really important for
our listeners to understand as well this morning is that,
you know, we've got more than fifty percent of our
prisoners as I understand it, that are currently on remand
so that is an enormous number of prisoners that are
on remand waiting for their case to be heard.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
In addition to that, in Catherine, we're hearing that you know,
you've got delays for people waiting to get to the court.
So they've been arrested, they're in the Watchhouse. They're waiting
a number of days to even be you know, being
able to front up and get into court. And the
impact that that's having, I think is broader than what
you know, broader than what we discuss often because you
(12:42):
look at the impact on our prisons, we know that
they are absolutely overflowing, and then you look at even
the impact on the Kathruin Watchhouse for example, that's having
to be staffed by the Northern Territory Police. So everybody's
doing their best to do their jobs, but by the
sounds of it, the court system is holding things up
in some ways. And I know that those working within
(13:04):
the court system wouldn't like, you know, that to be
happening either. I'm assuming that they want things to be
moving more quickly. So I guess the big question is
how are we going to sort of smarten this up
nice and fast so that we can get things moving
more quickly.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, and you're exactly right, Katie. Like those pressures that
you talk about, they are every aspect of our community,
and like everyone is working hand in glove together, including
you know, the people that work within the courts. Like
I meet with the chief Judge, I meet with the
defense lawyers, I meet with the prosecutors to try and
work out all these different things which aren't sexy, they're
(13:39):
not exciting in terms of discussing how we can, you know,
specifically address all of these process issues within a court system.
But all of them, all of it is very important,
and you have to work through every single part. And
there's already been a mountain of work that has been
done in that space, and I can see that when
I go down to the courts. But I can also
see there is still so much more work to be done.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
And I want to say as well, I totally understand.
You know, some people listening this morning might be thinking
to themselves, oh, do you know what will fee if
someone gets charged with, you know, whatever offense they get
charged with. They deserve to go through this process. I'm
not disputing that. My concern actually is that when you
look at victims, and you know, when you look at
victims and wanting some justice when they have become a
(14:25):
victim of crime, you want that process to happen really
as quickly as it can.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's exactly right, Katie, And like all of this work
we do is exactly for that reason. Because of course,
offenders who are found guilty will be dealt with, but
the victims have to go through an enormous amount of strain,
and you know, the impact on them is life like
last for a lifetime. You know. That's and that's why
we are doing this work. And we can't just put
(14:52):
all that focus on police to keet these offenders off
the street. And we can't just you know, put all
the focus on corrections for they at the end like
the system that sits right in the middle of those
two things, and you know, as soon as you push
a little bit, something else changes. And that's why that's
why I've been going down to the court, that's why
I've been meeting with everybody and looking at all those processes, which,
(15:13):
like I said, are not sexy, it's almost not even
media worthy. But it's going to happen. They've got to happen,
and I'm not going to take my foot off the
pedal and until we can see some change there. And
it's not and it's bumpy, it really is, And I
absolutely acknowledge that this is not an ideal situation. It's
absolutely imperfect. But as long as we keep working towards it,
(15:35):
which we are, and you know the main objective is
to keep our offenders off the streets and that you know,
we need to keep our community safe and absolutely you know,
we can't apologize for that and we won't, but we
do absolutely acknowledge that all the work that has to
happen within the court system, the justice system, and of
course our corrections as well well.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Attorney General for the Northern Territory, Marie Claire Boothby, we
are going to have to leave it there. Really appreciate
your time today, Thanks so much for having a chat
with us.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Thank you Katie, and thank you
Now, the Government last week announced the introduction of the
Defamation Legislation Amendment Bill of twenty twenty five to Parliament.
There was so much legislation and so much happening in
Parliament last week that there is a lot of information
to get our heads around now. The Attorney General, Marie
Claire Boothby said that the bill was a much needed
reform to territory defamation law that is going to prevent
(00:22):
our legal system from being overburdened by minor matters and
protect Territorians from unnecessary legal battles over trivial disputes. The
Attorney General Marie Claire booth Me joins me on the line,
good morning to your minister.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Good morning and to your listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Now, why was this Defamation Legislation Amendment Bill introduced?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So, Katie, this is a bit of legislation that has
sort of been kicking around the corridors of Parliament for
quite some time. In fact, it was from about twenty
twenty and I note that Labour didn't bring this forward,
whereas we've picked it up and said, you know what,
this is something that actually could help with this overburdensome
on our courts, which we know is a huge issue.
(01:06):
So to try and avoid like trivial and frivolous legal
disputes happening in our courts, this legislation actually allows for
the real proper defamation claims that to be hurt in
courts only. And it's a bitten technical and probably somewhat
boring in terms of all the aspects of it, but
(01:26):
I can go through some againt.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah. Well, look, I suppose for me, I was surprised
when I saw the release come through because in that
release it said, you know that you're proud to support
a bill that protects the freedom of speech, empowers journalists
to hold public figures accountable, and enhances efficiencies in our
legal system. And I thought, while I was reading it,
I'm not sure how this is going to impact me.
And I'm one of the very people that it's probably
(01:48):
aimed at protecting. So how will it protect freedom of speech?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, and I guess I'll start by saying this is
definitely not legal advice. Katie and few listeners. I'll just
if you do end up in a situation where you
need to make sure you seek some legal advice. But yeah,
you're right, Look, this is about protecting giving extra protections
or defenses for journalists. As an example, this is one
(02:13):
of the elements of the bill. And I'll give you
the example, like let's say you and I ktie, you're
a journalist on air. You might say something that I
deem as defamation about myself as Attorney General. Instead of
me going straight up to the court and putting forward
a complaint, and then you and I end up in
a trial, you and I have to work this out
first together, So it makes it mandatory for a dispute
(02:37):
resolution to occur. Now in that process, what has to
happen is if you can prove that you sourced information
with from the right sources, that it's you know, in
the public interest, and you checked your facts, and you
also gave me a right to comment about it or
a right reply, then that's extra defenses which are now
going to be in law to I guess protect you
(02:58):
from a potential case. And the other part of it,
which is really important, is that you would I would
have to prove that there was serious harm in the
whole defamation you know, commentary. So harm sorry, would be
things like economic loss or a real reputational damage. So
it kind of puts the emphasis back on the complainant
(03:21):
to ensure that they really do have a genuine case
for defamation, because otherwise we'll just end up in the
courts for a long period of time a lot of
he said, She said, So that's a really important part
to be able to protect freedman speech. You know, we
want our journalists to be able to say the things
they need to say about our public figures and other
public interest type matters. But without that, you just you know,
(03:42):
you could end up in court.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Well, look, and I think that it is really important
that we get this right. I guess the other part
of it, though, is are we going to end up
in a situation where you know, people are jumping online,
they're making all sorts of comments about other people, and
then you know, it's the onus is on the complaint
to try and prove that they've been defamed.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Imagine this, right, You have a dispute between a neighbor,
and then that neighbor jumps the line and tells everyone
that the neighbors you know, about personal lie or whatever
they want to say. What we don't want is something
like that, which is a dispute of a trivial nature
to end up in the courts. So between those two parties,
they have to prove, if they end up in court
that they've tried to sort it out. They've had they've
(04:22):
had dispute resolution, that's happened with the mediation, they've had
to prove a trail of paperwork where they've tried to
solve this because, like I said, we don't want those
kinds of matters like private citizens and disputes or reviews
online all going to a court where it could absolutely
be dealt with well before that.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And so why is this needed from a you know,
like in a practical sense, from the court perspective, do
we see a lot of situations across the Northern Territory
where these kinds of things are clogging up the court system.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
We haven't seen a great deal in the Northern Territory yet.
But another point, which is why we wanted to bring
it forward, is that every other state has tightened up
these laws to ensure it doesn't overburden courts around Australia.
And because the Territory didn't have these laws, which is
the reason why we're bringing them in, because it means
that people can actually forum shop around Australia. So if
(05:16):
you're a corporate and you want to, you know, try
and say someone's to faming the corporate brand or the person,
the person within the corporate and they've got big, deep pockets.
They could easily come to the territory and lodge a
case and have it heard here, and you know, that's
not the kind of thing we want to happen here
in the territory either, like it should be happening in
whatever state that you know, the jurisdiction is. So there's
(05:38):
a lot of tightening up. Like I said, it is
quite technical, there's a lot of points about it. But
those examples where we can try and get those disputes
that happen that can happen in court between two people
or between a journalist and someone with a profile, we
want them to be dealt with where possible outside the court. Now,
of course there are going to be some cases that
(05:59):
do end up in court because they're very serious, they
have caused harm, economic loss, reputational damage. Those still will happen,
but this way this just ensures that there's protections to,
you know, remove the frivolous claims. Unless someone is really
serious about putting forward a defamation claim, then this allows
it to not happen.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So how quickly are we expecting these changes to come
into play. Obviously it's all going to go through Parliament first.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, yeah, So it was tabled last week. It will
sit in Parliament for a number of weeks until either
the next sitting or maybe even the sitting after it
depends on how much other legislation we have, because as
you've said, we've got lots coming through and then once
it's debated, it'll go through to the agencies to then
implement and it will happen when it happens, But you know,
(06:48):
we want to try and get it done as soon
as possible and that way we put it to bed
and we you know, have more freedom of speech available
to Territorians now.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Attorney General, we also know that there is obviously quite
an enormous burden on our courts at the moment. When
we spoke to the Law Society of the Northern Territories
President last week, we've spoken about the fact that the
NT courts have revealed that they're experiencing more than twenty
two thousand criminal and domestic violence cases. Well, they're expected
(07:17):
to by the end of twenty four to twenty five
financial year. That's three three hundred and ninety four more
cases than the year prior. This new data that was
released predicts an eighteen percent increase in lodgements compared to
the previous twelve months. It's going to break it, sorry,
a decade long record, I should say, for lower courts.
(07:37):
What do you think that this increase demonstrates.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So, Katie, this is true, and our courts have been
having a lot of pressure on them for a long
time now, but it certainly has been ramped up since
the new laws that we introduced late last year, and
of course we have more laws that are coming. So
we make no apologies for the fact that, you know,
defenders are now being dealt with in our courts and
(08:02):
a lot of them will be reminded and a lot
of them will wait for their trials or court hearing dates,
and some of them will end up incarcerated, you know,
as a sentence. And that's really important. I mean, we've
got those extra five hundred prisoners now that are in
there due to offenders off the streets. We've got our police,
you know, hunting down if you're like high risk offenders
that really shouldn't be on our streets. There was over
(08:24):
one hundred of them that have been arrested, and of
course it is putting pressure on our courts. But at
the same time, you know, we're doing the work within
the court system and the justice system to try and
alleviate this in terms of just getting matters through as
fast as we can. Now it's not a perfect system.
It's bumpy. They're all under pressure. They're working around the
(08:45):
clock to make this as smooth as possible, and it's
not smooth, and that's absolutely true. But what we've done
since coming to government is one recognize the pressures and
we've started to work on that. And I'll give you
a couple of examples of some of the changes that
we've made. Firstly, we found out that the prosecutors in
the DPP they weren't on permanent contracts. They only had
(09:07):
a twelve month contract. So that's a lot of uncertainty
within an area of really important to our justice system
where they just didn't have They didn't whether they're going
to be there the next day or not. So we've
actually made them permanent staff, which allows them to plan
for that certainty and any you know, changes that they
need to make within their area. We also ensured that
(09:28):
Legal Aid had the right amount of funding to be
able to continue their services. As we know last year
in the or larger had some problems, so we had
to ensure that they had the right amount of funding
and the conversations to make sure those levels of funding
for legal services continue. Because we're in the budget process
right now, we want to make sure that for all
the money we invest in police, we also invested into
(09:49):
our justice system, which includes our legal services and of
course also corrections, which is another flow on Kadi. I
was just in the court on Monday watching how it
all plays out, so the second time I've been down
in a matter of months to just watch exactly how
it works. And you can see there that things like
the video links are now operational, and there were many
(10:09):
cases I watched where you know, the person incarcerated was
on the video and so they were able to get
through those matters faster, which is good. I could still
see a lot of challenges and one of the things
that was really obvious was the work between the prosecutors
and the defense lawyers. A lot of that conversation should
have been happening well before they were in front of
(10:30):
a judge and it hadn't been and yet apparently many
many years ago, that used to happen quite regularly, like
they would literally meet up, work out if they had everything.
I mean, is it a situation.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Is it a situation where they're not though, because they
simply don't have the time.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Well, that's part of the resourcing, you know, not being
able to resource the right amount of prosecutors and the
right amount of defense lawyers. Like, there's a lot of
work that goes into these cases and unless you know
those people have the time to prepare that work. Obviously,
see their clients if if it's their defense lawyer, then
work with the prosecution, work with police to make sure
all the information is there to work out you know,
(11:06):
what's going to happen. Are they going to plea a
particular way and once and so ideally once they're in
front of the judge, it's a smooth process, you know,
it just go through the process, the judge will go
through what they need to do. But that hasn't been happening.
So with the right resources, which is the budget stuff
we're working on that will allow that kind of early
process to occur before they get in front of the judge, So.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You're confident that'll have a big impact.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Oh, I think it will. I think the court system's
quite There's a lot of process that goes on and
a lot of moving parts, and I think it's like anything,
if you change a couple of those small things within
a whole process, it makes a big difference. And like
with anything, you know, we'll tweak that. If it's not working,
we'll try something else, and we will also bring forward
legislation to provide those efficiencies with the courts. We're working
(11:54):
on some efficiencies now which will help again free up
those things. Just all the technical stuff like it is
quite boring, pitty it is.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
But look, I think the thing that's really important for
our listeners to understand as well this morning is that,
you know, we've got more than fifty percent of our
prisoners as I understand it, that are currently on remand
so that is an enormous number of prisoners that are
on remand waiting for their case to be heard.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
In addition to that, in Catherine, we're hearing that you know,
you've got delays for people waiting to get to the court.
So they've been arrested, they're in the Watchhouse. They're waiting
a number of days to even be you know, being
able to front up and get into court. And the
impact that that's having, I think is broader than what
you know, broader than what we discuss often because you
(12:42):
look at the impact on our prisons, we know that
they are absolutely overflowing, and then you look at even
the impact on the Kathruin Watchhouse for example, that's having
to be staffed by the Northern Territory Police. So everybody's
doing their best to do their jobs, but by the
sounds of it, the court system is holding things up
in some ways. And I know that those working within
(13:04):
the court system wouldn't like, you know, that to be
happening either. I'm assuming that they want things to be
moving more quickly. So I guess the big question is
how are we going to sort of smarten this up
nice and fast so that we can get things moving
more quickly.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, and you're exactly right, Katie. Like those pressures that
you talk about, they are every aspect of our community,
and like everyone is working hand in glove together, including
you know, the people that work within the courts. Like
I meet with the chief Judge, I meet with the
defense lawyers, I meet with the prosecutors to try and
work out all these different things which aren't sexy, they're
(13:39):
not exciting in terms of discussing how we can, you know,
specifically address all of these process issues within a court system.
But all of them, all of it is very important,
and you have to work through every single part. And
there's already been a mountain of work that has been
done in that space, and I can see that when
I go down to the courts. But I can also
see there is still so much more work to be done.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
And I want to say as well, I totally understand.
You know, some people listening this morning might be thinking
to themselves, oh, do you know what will fee if
someone gets charged with, you know, whatever offense they get
charged with. They deserve to go through this process. I'm
not disputing that. My concern actually is that when you
look at victims, and you know, when you look at
victims and wanting some justice when they have become a
(14:25):
victim of crime, you want that process to happen really
as quickly as it can.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's exactly right, Katie, And like all of this work
we do is exactly for that reason. Because of course,
offenders who are found guilty will be dealt with, but
the victims have to go through an enormous amount of strain,
and you know, the impact on them is life like
last for a lifetime. You know. That's and that's why
we are doing this work. And we can't just put
(14:52):
all that focus on police to keet these offenders off
the street. And we can't just you know, put all
the focus on corrections for they at the end like
the system that sits right in the middle of those
two things, and you know, as soon as you push
a little bit, something else changes. And that's why that's
why I've been going down to the court, that's why
I've been meeting with everybody and looking at all those processes, which,
(15:13):
like I said, are not sexy, it's almost not even
media worthy. But it's going to happen. They've got to happen,
and I'm not going to take my foot off the
pedal and until we can see some change there. And
it's not and it's bumpy, it really is, And I
absolutely acknowledge that this is not an ideal situation. It's
absolutely imperfect. But as long as we keep working towards it,
(15:35):
which we are, and you know the main objective is
to keep our offenders off the streets and that you know,
we need to keep our community safe and absolutely you know,
we can't apologize for that and we won't, but we
do absolutely acknowledge that all the work that has to
happen within the court system, the justice system, and of
course our corrections as well well.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Attorney General for the Northern Territory, Marie Claire Boothby, we
are going to have to leave it there. Really appreciate
your time today, Thanks so much for having a chat
with us.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Thank you Katie, and thank you
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