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Australia’s courts costing upwards of $1.5bn
The Australian government has released its government services report, painting a picture of the productivity and cost-effectiveness of Australia’s courts.
Grace Ormsby
Of the nearly $17.2 billion spent on justice services by the government in 2017/18, only 9.2 per cent of this was taken up by the courts, according to the commission’s report.
The chapter in the report dedicated to the courts focused on performance information for court administrative support services for Australian federal, state and territory courts, but did not consider the judicial decisions that were made in the courts.
Nationally, the total recurrent expenditure by all courts considered in the report totaled nearly $1.9 billion over the period, according to the Productivity Commission.
When the expenditure figure took court income into account, this number came down to approximately $1.5 billion, the report said, with the civil jurisdiction accounting for the vast majority of received income, while approximately $33 million in civil court fees were noted as having been waived, reduced or exempted.
With most courts able to waive or reduce fees to “ameliorate the impact on vulnerable or financially disadvantaged parties”, the report showed that the highest proportion of total payable civil court fees were waived or reduced in the Northern Territory Magistrates’ court, with such action taken in more than a third of cases (36.1 per cent).
This was followed by the Family Court of WA, where fees were waived or reduced in 28.4 per cent of cases, and the Family Court of Australia, which waived or reduced fees 19.7 per cent of the time.
The report also gave a comprehensive breakdown of court cases, showing that 5921 lodgments in were made in 2017/18 in the Federal Court of Australia, while 20,826 lodgments were made in the Family Court of Australia, and a further 95,716 lodgments were filed in the Federal Circuit Court.
In 2017/18, there were 791,216 criminal lodgments registered in the supreme, district/county, magistrates’ and children’s courts nationally, compared with 419,765 civil lodgements in the same courts, and 77,916 probate matters lodged in the supreme courts.
All states and territories reported higher criminal court logments than those in civil courts, according to the commission.
Finalisation of cases was also looked at, with 800,454 criminal finalisations spanning supreme, district/county, magistrates’ and children’s courts, placing the completion rate slightly higher than the 2017/18 lodgings figure.
Civil finalisations also were slightly higher than lodgings, with 427,208 finalisations recorded in the same courts.
