New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal explained

Agency Name:	New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal
Type:	Legal tribunal
Seal:	Coat of Arms of New South Wales.svg
Formed:	1 January 2014
Preceding1:	Administrative Decisions Tribunal, Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, Guardianship Tribunal, Nurses and Midwives Tribunal, Physiotherapists Tribunal and 17 other tribunals
Jurisdiction:	New South Wales
Headquarters:	Level 9, John Maddison Tower, 86–90 Goulburn Street, Sydney
Region Code:	AU-NSW
Chief1 Name:	The Hon Justice Lea Armstrong
Chief1 Position:	President
Parent Agency:	Supreme Court of New South Wales

The New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) is a civil law and administrative law tribunal in New South Wales established by statute^[1] on 1 January 2014.^[2]

It replaced and aggregated the matters of a number of disparate tribunals.^[3]

The NCAT specifically replaced the Administrative Decisions Tribunal of New South Wales and the work of a former 21 other tribunals into a single point of access for specialist tribunal services in NSW.^[4]

Organisational structure

The NCAT has four operational divisions:

• Administrative and Equal Opportunity Division
• Consumer and Commercial Division
• Guardianship Division
• Occupational Division

Given certain circumstances parties may appeal decisions to NCAT's Internal Appeal Panel. Internal appeals are made on questions of law. Applications can only be made about the merits of a decision if the Appeal Panel gives permission. Some Division decisions are not subject to an internal appeal and may be appealed directly to the Supreme Court or Court of Appeal.^[5]

Current jurisdictional error issues for NCAT

On Friday, 3 February 2017, the New South Wales Court of Appeal issued a declaration that the NSW Administrative and Civil Tribunal(NCAT) (which handles a range of small civil disputes), has no jurisdiction if one party lives in another state.^[6] The Court held, inter alia, that a State tribunal which is not a “court of a State” is unable to exercise judicial power to determine matters between residents of two States because the State law which purports to authorise the tribunal to do so is inconsistent with the conditional investment by s 39(2) of the Judiciary Act^[7] of all such jurisdiction in State courts, and therefore rendered inoperative by virtue of the inconsistency of laws provision under s 109 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (Cth).^[8]

On Thursday, 22 June 2017, Justices Gordon and Edelman of the High Court of Australia granted special leave to appeal the decision of the New South Wales Court of Appeal to the High Court.^[9]

It was believed that the practical effect of this decision is that tenants in New South Wales could discover their tenancy agreements are unenforceable if their landlord lives interstate.^[10]

Alternatives to appeal

The Tribunal, in its Guideline on Appeals, indicates that an appeal may not always be the most appropriate course when there is a difficulty or problem with a decision of the Tribunal. The Tribunal points out that, as an alternative to appealing, a party can:

• ask the Tribunal to set aside the decision (where all parties consent, or where the Tribunal is satisfied that a decision made in a party's absence has resulted in the party's case not being adequately put to the tribunal)
• ask the Tribunal to set aside proceedings or a decision (where there has been a failure to comply with certain procedural rules)
• ask the Tribunal to correct an obvious error in a decision or reasons for a decision (for example, clerical errors, accidental omissions, defects in forms or inconsistencies between the orders and the reasons for a decision) ^[11]

See also

• List of New South Wales courts and tribunals

Notes and References

1. Web site: Civil And Administrative Tribunal Act 2013. Austlii. 30 April 2014.
2. Web site: Welcome to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) . 15 April 2014. New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal. 30 April 2014.
3. News: Law-and-order beast felled demoted attorney-general Greg Smith. Pelly. Michael. 25 April 2014. The Australian. News Corp Australia. 30 April 2014.
4. Web site: Former tribunals consolidated in NCAT. 3 April 2014. New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal. 30 April 2014. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20140508164021/http://www.ncat.nsw.gov.au/ncat/former_tribunals.html. 8 May 2014.
5. Web site: Appeals. New South Wales Civil & Administrative Tribunal. 6 March 2017. This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
6. Web site: Burns v Corbett [2017] NSWCA 3]. NSW Court of Appeal. 14 July 2017. 2017.
7. Web site: s 39(2) Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth). Federal Register of Legislation. July 2016 . 14 July 2017.
8. Web site: Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. Federal Register of Legislation. 29 July 1977 . 14 July 2017.
9. Web site: Burns v Gaynor & Ors; Burns v Corbett & Ors; Attorney General for New South Wales v Burns & Ors; Attorney General for New South Wales v Burns & Ors; State of New South Wales v Burns & Ors. High Court of Australia. 14 July 2017. [2017] HCATrans 136.
10. News: Vernon. Jackson. Malone. Ursula. NSW tenancy agreements potentially unenforceable against interstate landlords. ABC News. 14 July 2017 . 14 July 2017.
11. Web site: NCAT Guideline 1: Appeals . New South Wales Civil & Administrative Tribunal. 5 March 2017. This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.