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Speaker 1: Into the court system. Reform seems to be getting some

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Speaker 1: real attraction. In the latter stats of this Morning Show,

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Speaker 1: court backlogs are being sliced into civil cases in the

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Speaker 1: District Court dropped twenty percent in the year to July.

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Speaker 1: Disputes Tribunal cleared nine hundred more cases, while the current

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Speaker 1: is court cut active cases by fifteen percent. And Nicole McKey,

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Speaker 1: Associate Minister of Justice of Courses back with this morning

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Speaker 1: to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, Mike.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with the District Court, specifically new cases decreasing

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Speaker 1: seven percent. Is that less crime therefore less court time?

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Speaker 2: Well, yes, I mean there'sn't. The District Court civil jurisdiction

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Speaker 2: means that we've got a seven percent decrease, that's to

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Speaker 2: twenty four thousand, seven hundred cases, but we've completed eight percent,

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Speaker 2: which is twenty seven thousand, three hundred, so we are

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Speaker 2: completing more than what's coming in. And this is a

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Speaker 2: really good thing because it means that we've got a

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Speaker 2: thirty six percent decrease in the number of cases or

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Speaker 2: the time being taken. And that's huge, Mike, because you

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Speaker 2: know when I came in, it was three hundred thirty

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Speaker 2: days to complete a civil case. I mean, that's huge,

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Speaker 2: and we've managed to drop it down to two hundred

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Speaker 2: and eleven. Now, in my mind, that's way too much still,

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Speaker 2: but a thirty percent decrease is really really good, and

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Speaker 2: this is because the Registry and the judiciary are now

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Speaker 2: looking at effective measures on how to fix these problems

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Speaker 2: so that people can move through that system so much faster.

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Speaker 2: And this is a massive effort by them. They should

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Speaker 2: be congratulated for it.

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Speaker 1: So that's them working more efficiently. So that's an increase

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Speaker 1: in productivity in other words, as opposed to just simply

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Speaker 1: more money and more people.

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Speaker 2: Correct. I mean, we've had to put more money, more

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Speaker 2: people into the coroner's court, for example, but those delays

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Speaker 2: were huge. I mean, we've never had the sort of

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Speaker 2: delays that we've had within the coroner's Court. But by

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Speaker 2: instigating the four relief coroners, the new eight associate coroners

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Speaker 2: and clinical advisors, we've managed to also drop new cases

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Speaker 2: there and get that fifteen percent decline in people waiting

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Speaker 2: to find out what's happened to their loved ones. And

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Speaker 2: I mean that is a really big effort by the

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Speaker 2: coroner's court as well. I remember when I came in

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Speaker 2: an opposition, we had one family waiting eight years to

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Speaker 2: go through the coroner's court, so to have relief where

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Speaker 2: we've only got five thousand cases in there, we're down

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Speaker 2: to numbers not seen since twenty twenty. Massive effort again

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Speaker 2: by the Registry.

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Speaker 1: Good Dispatch Tribunal nine hundred more cases. Is that resource

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Speaker 1: or we're just more efficient again.

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Speaker 2: We're being more efficient. We're looking at how do we

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Speaker 2: go after the target the cases which are taking so

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Speaker 2: long to go through and actually manage them more effectively

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Speaker 2: so that we can complete them. So again, it's not

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Speaker 2: so much about the money, it's about targeting efficiencies and

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Speaker 2: the judiciary and the Registry. I'm going to keep saying

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Speaker 2: this might because they're the ones at the front line

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Speaker 2: that are making the changes that show that they can

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Speaker 2: fix this, fix it well and make our communities happier

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Speaker 2: in what can be a really horrible place for so

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Speaker 2: many of them.

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Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing what you can do when you actually

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Speaker 1: set out to do something, Nicole McKee, the Associate Minister

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Speaker 1: of Justice, the good numbers, aren't they? For More from

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