With Wollongong's federal circuit court, which covers cases from Helensburgh to Batemans Bay, juggling a massive case load, lawyers and judges are being forced to pit urgent family tragedies against each other in an effort to decide which delays will cause the least harm to children.
Lawyers and judges in Wollongong's strained federal circuit court system are being forced to pit family tragedy against family tragedy as they try to minimise harm to vulnerable children.
Family law chairperson of the Wollongong District Law Society Lorelle Longbottom says recent judge appointments in Sydney have made little difference in the overburdened Wollongong court – the largest single-judge registry in Australia.
Further, the Burelli Street court still has no dedicated full-time judge, and 581 matters remain on the books of Wollongong’s part time Sydney-based judge Tom Altobelli.
Ms Longbottom said this huge backlog meant September 7 was the earliest available date for the most urgent Illawarra cases to be finalised.
However, she said the court was so overloaded that it was forced to double or triple list, meaning two or three cases are listed in a time slot where only one case can be heard. Judges and lawyers have to decide which urgent case is most pressing, leaving the others to get rescheduled.
For most of the 581 Illawarra families currently stuck in the system, closure won’t come for at least 18 months.
Wollongong lawyers have told the Mercury of some of the real scenarios facing the local court registry (above), which show how real the risk of harm to children has become if the wrong decision is made."
It has to be a very, very difficult matter to get that priority hearing," Ms Longbottom said.
“How do you get that slot when you're talking about 581 other cases? The reality is that if you go in with a difficult but more typical matter – because they’re all difficult – you’re looking at a date more like mid-next year.”
“As family lawyers, we have to explain to our clients that 'Yes, your matter is dreadfully bad, but there’s something more dreadfully bad than yours’.
“This is something we see all the time, and it means the court is trying to make a decision about two bad scenarios, to see which is least bad.”
Ms Longbottom said the backlog was continuing to grow, as pushed-back final hearing dates meant more and more families were requesting urgent “interim” hearings.
“If you have a parenting case or a property case where you need the judge to determine an issue quickly, you can ask the court for an interim hearing,” she said.
“The court will hear the matter, but it’s a short hearing and the evidence is untested.
“And there’s a huge ripple effect, because the longer it takes for people to get a hearing, the more interim hearings that need to be heard and that creates a bottleneck that you just can’t overcome.”
Broken circuit: courts in chaos
As Wollongong's federal court struggles under an almost impossible load, politicians have highlighted under-resourcing facing courts around the country.
In federal parliament last week, Labor MP Graham Perrett said delays in replacing retiring judges were "creating backlogs of misery and bottlenecks of heartache where families suffer because of the Attorney-General's tardiness".
“[This has] caused huge backlogs of work that these registries will never recover from,” he said.
Parramatta MP Julie Owens highlighted the problems with the federal courts in her electorate, where there are empty court rooms due to a judge shortage. She also noted the government recently appointed a new federal circuit court judge to Rockhampton, in Senator Brandis’s home state of Queensland, but that there was no court room available for that judge to work from.
“Parramatta has lots of courts but no judges. Rockhampton is blessed in that it has one more judge than it has courts. I seriously urge the Attorney-General to have a look at what he is doing and perhaps plan a little further ahead than he is now.”
In response to the Mercury’s questions, a department spokewoman repeated an earlier statement, saying “the management of courts is the responsibility of the administrators of the courts, not the executive government”.
Also last week, the government passed an amendment to the laws governing the federal courts, saying the changes would “enable the courts to redirect more of their available funds away from administrative functions towards the delivery of frontline services and justice to the Australian community”.
A media release from Senator Brandis’s office said this would save $9.4 million between now and 2021, and would allow more “efficiencies and organisational agility”.
The Attorney General’s department spokeswoman said the family court had “a full complement of judges” and noted the federal circuit court had one vacancy due to the recent sudden death of a judge in the Melbourne registry.
“On 25 February, the Attorney‑General announced the appointment of two judges to the federal circuit court, including Judge Elizabeth Boyle to the Sydney registry,” the spokeswoman said.
“This follows the appointment of four judges to the Federal Circuit Court last October, including the appointment of Judge Philip Dowdy to the Sydney registry. The Sydney registry appointments will greatly assist in managing the workload in the Sydney Basin.”
Brandis corrects senate record
Attorney General Senator George Brandis has moved to "clarify" evidence he gave to a Senate estimates hearing last month, after saying he had not heard from Illawarra MPs about the campaign to relieve chronic backlogs in Wollongong's overloaded family court system.
On February 9, he told the hearing that “The only politician who has raised the issue of Wollongong [Federal Circuit Court judicial services] is Senator Fierravanti Wells.”
However, he has now written to the senate committee secretary to say he received letters from MPs in December, January and early February, but they were “not brought to my attention”.
Cunningham MP Sharon Bird said she hoped Senator Brandis would now take note of the campaign.
“If nothing else, giving him some embarrassment might draw his attention,” she said.
“We are really pushing for a permanent judge in Wollongong, and given the geographic spread of cases we think we should be able to achieve that.”
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