my past work experience at Legal Aid - part 2

Monday 5-8-2002

I was intrigued to find that I was one of the earliest arrivals at our unit. I was looking forward to making myself a good cup of coffee in the tea room when, to my disappointment, there were no styrofoam cups available. Now, I didn’t expect that because last week, there were approximately 10 cups available! So, with no coffee in hand, I reluctantly went back to my work station and picked up where I left off last week, reading case files.

The unit co-ordinator told me that he had matters at the Magistrate Court and the District Court this morning and asked whether I wanted to join him. Of course I did, otherwise, I don’t think they’ll have enough work to occupy all my time at the office today!

At 9:45am, the unit co-ordinator, the colleague on exchange and I proceeded to the Magistrate Court a block away. Our first point of call was Court 5. There was a big crowd there but it was not unusual especially considering it’s Monday. The unit co-ordinator left the colleague on exchange and I to do his work, whatever that was but he returned less than half an hour later. It was time for him to attend to other matters at the District Court. He recommended that I stay behind at the Magistrate Court paying close attention to Courts 5 and 6 and that suited be fine because I’ve already spent half a day last week at the District Court. The colleague on exchange opted to go with the unit co-ordinator to the District Court because she’s sat thought many Magistrate Court sessions during her time at the other federal government department.

Court 5 bored me to death firstly because the judge did nothing more than adjourn every single case before him and secondly because you can hardly hear what the lawyers are saying. I can’t believe how softly the lawyers speak and how good their manners become when they are facing judges! Perhaps the lawyers feel intimidated by judges or they are just showing the judge respect or they think that the judge may be more lenient when making decisions or they are just unprepared. It’s probably a combination of all of these. Anyway, getting back to what I was talking about, I went to Court 6 after just half an hour in Court 5.
Court 6 was much quieter but was only slightly less boring than Court 5 because the judge repeated his obligatory remarks to every accused before him. One of the more interesting cases involved a woman charged with stealing a washing machine from the local community centre. I don’t even know why anyone would even bother to try, I mean, washing machines are relatively big compared with other household appliances!

While the judge adjourned for his coffee break, a Legal Aid colleague introduced me to a solicitor representing the State. This guy is worth a mention purely because he reckons that the Mabo decision was totally wrong. He argued that the white settlers conquered Australia (and the Aboriginals) so therefore, there was no need to recognise Aboriginal law. He referred to East Timor as an analogy. He said that East Timor was initially ruled by the Portuguese with Portuguese law before Indonesia took over and applied their own rules. Now, East Timor is independent and have they own unique legal system. He maintained that Australia is no different and therefore the Mabo decision was wrong. By that stage, court was reassuming so I didn’t have time to continue our heated debate.

I was going to tell him that the High Court in Mabo was only trying to bring Australian law in line with the other countries and that he, by saying that the Mabo decision was wrong, is effectively saying that those other landmark decisions regarding Aboriginal law in various countries (such as Canada) are wrong too. Now, we’ve also got to keep in mind that the court in countries such as Canada reached their landmark decisions long before Australia so it’s fair to say that there’s been a lot of literature written by world renowned academics on the recognition of Aboriginal law long before Mabo and I have no doubt that the High Court in Mabo would have consulted these secondary materials before they delivered their respective concurring judgments. Also, since the Mabo decision, we’ve also had a lot of literature discuss the decision and as far as I know, no one as yet has said that the Mabo decision was totally wrong. In any case, the High Court has had numerous opportunities to revisit the issue and overturn their previous Mabo decision in cases such as Wik and more recently, Ward.

However, the High Court has not done that. Now, unless the guy can proof that the majority of the Australian population have stones in their head, I, for one, will not buy his argument. In actual fact, I think that he is the one with stones in his head. If not, then he is, at the very least, extremely narrow minded for he cannot provide any other argument to support his point besides the matter of who conquered who. In any case, let’s just accept the decision, respect our legal system and move on. By the time I was finished at the Magistrate Court, it was nearly 1pm.

After lunch at the train station, I sat in on an interview with another colleague from my unit and her client. The meeting only lasted approximately 15 minutes because they’ve been through everything at an earlier interview and her appointment with the judge is in two days time, on Wednesday. My colleague explained all the available options open to her and wrote up an instructions statement listing what she said and did at this particular meeting. The client then signed and dated each page of the instructions statement verifying its truth. By the way, the client was charged with stealing an antique jug from one antique dealer and then on-selling it to another antique dealer. After the meeting, it was back to reading case files for me.