Negative? Why? The second step

The second step envisaged in Bill 82 and contained in Part III is to create an Administrative Review Tribunal.

The idea behind this new legal creature is simple - to bring all the different extant tribunals under one umbrella, both legally and administratively. This means that the Administrative Review Tribunal will slowly, but surely, start to take responsibility to decide the different matters which, at present, fall under the remit of the various tribunals.

The proposed Administrative Review Tribunal will be housed at the law courts, thereby centralising and rendering uniform all the administrative review proceedings.

The Administrative Review Tribunal will retain most of the advantages an administrative tribunal now has but would do away with the present inadequacies. The Bill, in fact, proposes to transfer to the Administrative Review Tribunal, once it has been established, the competences of the tribunals from the very start, namely the following:

i) Spirits Ordinance (Cap. 41); ii) Lepers Ordinance (Cap. 45); iii) Agricultural Produce (Export) Ordinance (Cap. 85); iv) Supplies and Services Act (Cap. 117); v) Wine Act (Cap. 436); vi) Animal Welfare Act (Cap. 439); vii) Cooperative Societies Act (Cap. 442); viii) Civil Explosives

Regulations (SL 22.04); ix) Importation of Dogs and Cats Regulations (SL 26.42); x) Motor Vehicles (Carriage Of Goods By Road) Regulations (SL 65.19); xi) National Malta Library Regulations (SL 92.03); xii) Malta Public Library Regulations (SL 96.06); xiii) Control of the Sale of Egg Regulations (SL 117.17); xiv) Control of the Kerosene Regulations (SL 117.18) and xv) Airport (Ground Handling Services) Regulations (SL 232.15).

At present these tribunals have a light workload. They have been identified so that the proposed Administrative Review Tribunal will start its rodage at a steady but not too heavy pace in the discharge of its duties. Later, all the other tribunals will also be moved under one umbrella (drawing on the experience gained).

The proposed tribunal will be presided over either by a sitting judge or a magistrate or by former judge or former magistrate. When the exercise is concluded, the Administrative Review Tribunal should ensure that administrative law would be applied (and practised) in a uniform and consistent manner. As the tribunal is set up and all the different tribunals are unified, there would be a presiding judge or magistrate. The tribunal will cease being a "special tribunal" and become one specialised administrative law court.

We would move to confer onto it the powers of article 469A. The simple, not twisted or malicious, reason is that, at that point, enough legal experience and "jurisprudence", in a wider sense than simple case decisions, would have been gathered. Also, as my friend Mario de Marco rightly pointed out during the parliamentary debate, to obviate the possibility of forum shopping, which will exist for as long as the competences overlap.

The opposition voiced many objections to the new Bill. Besides elaborating on some legal points, the main thrust of the argument was that the government was thereby trying to reduce the power to review administrative discretion. In order to remove all forms of false suspicions we pledged ourselves to withdraw the amendment to article 469A at this stage.

My final remark: This reform has been mooted for many years. Even if we had not joined the European Union, it would have been necessary to give better form and substance to our administrative justice. Within the EU, we have, of course, to address the added imperatives of the proper scrutiny of the observance of the rule of law in our public administration. It is a pity that some members on the opposition side prefer to take the side of inertia and sow the seed of suspicion.

It is a Bill that would increase the rights of John Citizen vis-a-vis the public administration. One cannot understand why a party out of office should be averse to this kind of Bill, except, of course, by resorting to the obvious - merely oppose for the sake of opposing.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici is Parliamentary Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs.