1990s: the new model
Starting the decade with the first Labor Government in Queensland for 32 years, wholesale changes were made to the way government and the department did business. Virtually immediately, the traditional system of public service appointments based largely on seniority vanished. It was replaced by the appointment of people on merit. The changes were overseen by the new Director-General, Barry Smith.
The Attorney-General functions were now separated from the justice portfolio. Justice had retained the majority of its existing portfolio functions and had inherited Corrective Services, creating the Department of Justice and Corrective Services, with the Attorney-General functions within their own portfolio.
Replacing the traditional transfer of skills from senior staff to those less experienced, the introduction of a TAFE course gave Associate Diploma status to ‘Justice Studies’ and guaranteed uniformity of knowledge across the board. The new clerks of the court, now called registrars in line with Supreme Court and District Court terminology, were trained in staff management, budget control and civil jurisdiction pre-trial conferences.
After the jury computer system was introduced in 1992 to make the jury selection system more efficient, the department also gave high priority to the development of a computerised legal information system. The Queensland Legal Information Retrieval System (QLIRS) proved to be an asset to the Attorney-General’s department as well as associated legal professionals.
Legal Aid Queensland set up its telephone information service, a forerunner to the complex centre that was later to replace it. By giving information via telephone to people with simple and common enquiries, legal professionals were freed up to concentrate on more complex issues and the litigation process.
The new Justices of the Peace Act created new categories of JPs and involved skills-based examinations as part of the qualifications. Alternative dispute resolution became one of the cornerstones of the ‘nonadversarial’ system of litigation. Under the Attorney-General’s department, it was integral to the new user-friendly legislation and became popular with the public for the speed and inexpensive cost of its decisions.
The Departments of Justice and the Attorney-General were rejoined in operation in September 1992. The Arts, previously with the Department of the Premier, Economic and Trade Development, was also added at this time. Corrective Services went to its own portfolio and the fair trading and consumer affairs components were separated to form the Department of Consumer Affairs.
The Case Register System (CRS) was expanded and the courts adopted the area manager concept, establishing large registries in major provincial cities with smaller courts as satellites in the same geographical division. Each of the area registries had the CRS to be followed by the newly developed civil and small claims version of the same system. The Self-Enforcing Ticketable Offence Notices System (SETONS) began operation in October 1992, processing less than 1000 files from Queensland Transport in its first year. By the end of its service in 2000, SETONS was processing about 150,000 files yearly.
The development of the Register of Encumbered Vehicles System (REVS) for fair trading in 1994–95 was a huge success with the public. For the first time, clear title to motor vehicles was available by a phone call or over the counter in the office.
The department had its first experience of a female Director-General in 1996, with Jane Macdonnell assuming office, albeit for a short-lived six week period.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions expanded its functions and now offered victim support services to the families of homicide victims, and to women and child victims of sexual and other violent assault. Legal Aid Queensland expanded its telephone information service into a full-blown call centre—a first for the department, with appropriate technology used and staffed by professionals.
The Queensland Government started work on replacing the overburdened SETONS system with the Fines, Infringement Notices and other Debts Enforcement Registry project (FINDER). Based on the best parts of SETONS and research in other countries, the work on FINDER led to the general acceptance that prison was to be a genuine last resort. It was eventually remodelled as the State Penalties Enforcement Registry (SPER) and along with the Courts Modernisation Project, which produced the Queensland Wide Interlinked Courts (QWIC) system, survived and continued into the new millennium.
The department also took on its human rights protection and promotion roles. With increased public attention being focused on the rights of citizens, particularly disadvantaged, groups, the department was uniquely placed to accomplish this task with its vast collection of legal services and its history of delivery to all sectors of the community.
As the 1990s drew to a close the department that was about to enter the 21st Century was scarcely recognisable from the one that entered the 20th Century, though the majority of the changes had come in the last decade.