Senator COONEY (8:44 PM) —I would like to return to a question about paragraph (4)(e), which talks about the independent person or body. Senator Minchin has answered this but I would like to raise it again. The example given there is a mining warden. The body suggested is equivalent in many ways to the National Native Title Tribunal, which has a former judge of the Federal Court heading it up.

When this becomes an act and when the body goes into operation, the question of who is going to be on these tribunals, courts and independent bodies is going to be crucial. It just seems to me that a mining warden would not be a sufficient person to have in charge of that. You should have somebody who is equivalent to a Federal Court or a Supreme Court judge, because the issues that he or she will have to decide are going to be very crucial ones and he or she will be making law to start off with and from then on. To leave that sort of function to a person who might not be qualified and who, as Senator Brown said, would feel overwhelmed by silks and counsel seems to be a terribly dangerous path. I was wondering whether the government could take on board the need to allow only those people of proper qualifications to form the independent person or body that is referred to in that paragraph.