In a hearing room in Sydney a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission is convened.
Today,it will hear applications for permission to appeal from all around Australia via video link.
This is part of an important pilot designed to improve the performance and efficiency
of the appeals process for unfair dismissal and general protections matters.
All appeals require permission to appeal - there's no automatic right of appeal. So it's always
been a requirement for the Fair Work Commission, in respect of any appeal, to consider whether
permission to appeal should be granted before the appeal is dealt with.
Normally, a permission hearing and the appeal itself are both conducted at the same time.
But that can be inefficient for the types of appeals where permission has very high
refusal rates.
It may mean that they would have to file an extensive submission, attend court for half
a day or a day in relation to an appeal which could fairly quickly be disposed of because
it lacked merit.
Historically, permission to appeal is refused in more than 60 per cent of unfair dismissal
matters. The pilot program focuses mainly on those appeals relating to unfair dismissal.
It also includes appeals relating to general protections matters.
We will set down a separate hearing for permission to appeal only. And there's a couple of features
in that. Firstly, the permission to appeal hearing will come on much more quickly than
the traditional appeal. It can be listed within a month of you filing the appeal and we are
trying to issue permission to appeal judgements within two weeks after that.
Usually, a Full Bench has to convene in the capital city where the appeal was lodged.
Often this meant incurring significant time and travel costs. But in the pilot all matters
are heard centrally in either Sydney or Melbourne - using video linkups when needed.
We will hear a much greater number of matters in a single day.
Because these hearings generally only examine permission to appeal, the time and money the
parties need to spend preparing documents and submissions is significantly reduced.
If you are the respondent, that is the person responding to someone else's appeal, unlike
the old system where you had to file a 10 page outline of submission, all you need to
do is be aware of the listing and turn up at the hearing and be in a position to respond
to whatever the appellant has to say.
As anticipated, up to three quarters of the applications in the pilot are being refused
permission to appeal. The pilot procedures mean these matters leave the system more quickly
and more cost effectively.
It has a lot of benefits for us. It reduces the time and the resources we have to devote
to appeals of the type that go into the pilot. And that in turn has knock on effects. Firstly,
in terms of all our other matters it means that we can release days of Members' time
for them to spend more time dealing with more complex matters.
There are also benefits for the parties.
We've had feedback - positive feedback - that this has been faster for them and particularly
has saved them on costs including legal costs. But even unsuccessful litigants I think appreciate
a quick outcome as distinct from an outcome which takes three, six or nine months to determine,
which is the sort of timescales you sometimes had to face under the old system. Certainly
on the material and performance measures we've taken to date, we've got every reason to think
that this should become a permanent feature of the Commission's processes. So parties
can expect, I think in all likelihood, that this will continue into the future