The recent decision to shelve the new courts precinct came as no surprise to many who had watched the ignominious rise and fall of the project. It was a cruel display of raising the hopes of everyone in the legal sector only to let them down with an unceremonious thump. That being said, the writing had been on the wall for a while.

What did surprise was the timing of the State Government’s announcement of an injection into arts funding of $180 million only few days later. This of course is an incentive to attract a private developer to redevelop the Festival Plaza area, which is much needed, but it speaks to the priorities of the government. Should the arts be put before the justice system?

To be clear, I don’t begrudge the arts sector its additional funding. No doubt those who use the Festival Centre facilities are delighted. However if state governments had the equivalent to a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid, I dare say justice and the rule of law would trump the arts. Why then is the Attorney-General indicating that our justice system must now line up to argue its case in the budget process, when the government gave an earlier clear and unambiguous undertaking to build the new court last year? What does this tell us of the priority ascribed by this government to the importance of the delivery of justice in this state? And what could be done with $180 million in new infrastructure for the courts?

Starting with the last question first, there are essentially two problems with the current courts infrastructure.

To recap: the first is the physical court rooms which are contained in fetching but impractical old buildings. Embarrassment reached its height when,  after suffering an unexpected injury whilst holidaying in Europe, our former Chief Justice the Hon John Doyle AC QC could not sit because the Supreme Court building did not have wheelchair access. This was an indictment indeed, and was reported with a sense of near disbelief at the time of its occurrence. The criticism of the bricks and mortar infrastructure of the courts is so wide-ranging it is difficult to summarise with the necessary economy of words, but it ranges from falling plaster work, peeling paint, ancient and impractical interiors to the alleged installation by court staff of a mattress at the bottom of a flight of stairs leading down from the bench, such as to arrest the fall of a descending judge in the event that she or he is unable to adroitly navigate the steep descent! It is unknown if the last point is urban myth, but one gets the picture.

The most concerning aspect is that our current Chief Justice, the Hon Chris Kourakis QC, is on the record as saying that although all of that is reprehensible and needs urgent attention, it is not our highest priority. Information communication technology is in fact our greatest need.

The quaint term used by ICT experts to describe the court’ss IT systems is that they are “legacy” systems. This is a polite way of saying they are utterly and completely out of date. There has been a complete underinvestment by successive governments.

Compare us to the commonwealth courts and we are an embarrassment. The Federal Court recently moved to an electronic platform. Applications can be made electronically and turned around in a very brief period of time relative to our state courts. It is the picture of efficiency.

What’s more, the Federal Court run what is known as an individual docket system. This means that one judge is seized of a matter from start to finish. It is without doubt the most efficient way in which to deliver civil justice. While a docket system is standard in the Federal Court, it is made impossible in our primary trial court, the District Court, because from month to month judges must move from the civil list to the criminal list and back again. No judge may remain seized of a civil matter for more than a brief period of time prior to trial. The Federal Court serves as a clear exemplar of how up to date IT systems can e used to effectively dispense civil just. In South Australia, we persist with hopelessly outdated ‘legacy’ systems and without a recognised division in our primary trial court between the civil and criminal jurisdictions and their respective demands.

To get a sense of our paper-based system, picture in your mind’s eye a scene from Dickens. A harried rounds clerk pounds the pavements with her or his bundles of documents tied in legal ribbon, perhaps, en route to the court registry where she or he joins a queue to have an appointment with a registry clerk who receives the papers, checks and seals and files them. Fast forward to the second decade of the 21st century Adelaide, and low and behold nothing has changed except the top hat. In they trudge in their dozens to the registry – and our Attorney-General has the gall to chastise the profession about the cost of civil justice.

The current methodology of the courts makes the entire exercise as labour intensive as possible. All of this could be achieved sitting at your computer in a climate controlled office. What’s more, firms are willing and waiting. Many law firms are forward thinkers who are regular users of our existing electronic Federal Court. Their collective spend on IT would put the state to shame.

It is also a false economy. Savvy IT solutions save money. If that were not the case why would the government be investing in a high end IT system for the new SA Civil and Administrative Tribunal? This system is being established for substantially less than $180 million. Why not, then, similarly invest in our existing and far more important institutions of justice, the courts? What precisely are the priorities of this government?

Interestingly the government has form in this area. As is obvious to everyone, the 165-year-old Yatala Labour Prison needs to replaced with a new gaol. The case was sufficiently compelling to cause the government to announce a new gaol project not last election, not the one before that but the one before that. It was never constructed. The government only committed to buil a further 380 prison beds late last year after a steadily rising prison population resulted in police cells being designated as correctional facilities and the doubling, tripling and quadrupling of the number of prisoners per cell.

What will it take to persuade the government of the imperative to invest in our justice sector? The Attorney’s most recent attempt to deal with the basket case that is our criminal justice system is to try to change our current approach to criminal justice. As I have opined before, after 13 years of a law and order approach from our State Government this recent onset of governmental schizophrenia is interesting to say the least. It will require the Attorney-General to become a public contortionist in order to explain to the electorate that we have in fact been doing it completely wrong for the past 13. The previous message was that the government approach was completely right. That aside, he expects us to embark on this epic U-turn without a single dollar in additional funding.

My sage advice is not to hold your breath expecting this new approach to work. We should put first things first. The diabolical state of our courts’ physical and IT infrastructure requires the equivalent of emergency surgery. If we can afford $180 million for the arts we can afford it for our system of justice. The tortured history of our stop-start approach to our courts is nothing short of a debacle. If the government is serious about justice in this state it should stop talking and start spending. After all, actions speak louder than words.

Morry Bailes is managing partner at Tindall Gask Bentley Lawyers, Member of the Executive of the Law Council of Australia and immediate past President of the Law Society of SA. The opinions expressed in this column are his own.

His column appears every second Thursday.

Disclosure: Morry Bailes is a member of the Liberal Party.