The feuding northern beaches neighbours and the morning yoga session

It took two mediators and just two and a half hours in an online meeting for Sydney woman Chloe* to reach an agreement with her neighbours in a noise dispute.

“Having two people who are non-biased and don’t know the background of both parties is actually brilliant. It opens up more conversation,” the northern beaches resident said.

The noise dispute involved neighbours on Sydney’s northern beaches.Credit: Jamie Brown, Louise Kennerley

“I can actually enjoy my morning coffee in the peace of my own home, do yoga and meditate without the noise interruption.”

It may sound like a service reserved for the wealthy, but it was entirely free of charge.

Chloe had contacted Community Justice Centres (CJC), a NSW government-funded service that provides free and confidential mediation by trained mediators.

The service has helped resolve thousands of disputes, including fights over neighbourhood fences, family feuds, strata disputes – where mediation may be compulsory before going to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal – and disagreements in clubs and sporting groups.

It also takes referrals from courts, including in some low-level Apprehended Personal Violence Order matters.

Service under threat

But CJCs are set to close on June 30 next year – a decision not widely announced. The NSW government plans to repeal the 1983 legislation that created CJCs and pass laws to establish a new mediation service within the Department of Communities and Justice.

That new service, slated to start on July 1, is expected to have a narrower remit, meaning more people seeking to resolve a dispute outside of court will have to pay for private mediators.

A wide range of private matters, including many neighbourhood disputes that account for a large portion of CJC work, will not fall automatically under its umbrella.

However, it is anticipated the new service will continue taking court referrals and handle disagreements involving incorporated associations such as sporting groups.

In 2022-23, the centres received 8672 new inquiries and arranged 749 mediations. Neighbourhood disagreements, which may otherwise consume council and police time, ranked as the most common dispute type, and 79 per cent of those were resolved.

Noise ‘significantly reduced’

After an online meeting this year, which included joint and separate discussions with the mediators, Chloe and her neighbours agreed on noise mitigation and future communication.

She said the noise had “significantly reduced” and she was “100 per cent happy with the mediators”. A key advantage of the mediation was it took the emotion out of the process to “focus on facts”.

“They sit in the middle. They don’t choose sides, which is great.”

Had the service been unavailable, or Chloe’s neighbours had not agreed to participate, the next step would have been to file a dispute at NCAT, a more formal process involving a filing fee.

NCAT was “time-consuming … because you need to be there physically”, she said. CJCs hold mediations face-to-face where possible but also conduct them online.

‘Essential part of diversion’

Former NSW Local Court magistrate Professor David Heilpern, dean of law at Southern Cross University, said CJCs were “an essential part of diversion from the courts system” and helped reduce the pressure on overloaded courts.

“We all know that if people resolve something, it’s likely to last,” Heilpern said. “If they get determined by a court, there’s a winner and a loser, and things are likely to become more inflamed.”

Casual mediators working in NSW for CJCs are paid $45 an hour.

“Do you really think you can find a public servant that’s going cost less than $45, plus all the training, plus the venues?” said Heilpern, who sat on the CJC board before his appointment as a magistrate in 1998.

“I’ve not seen any external evaluation; I’ve not seen any consultation about it. The replacement [service] seems incredibly vague.”

BY THE NUMBERS

CJCs received 8672 new inquiries and arranged 749 mediations in 2022-2023. Most resulted in a resolution and agreement:

• Landlord/tenant disputes: 83 per cent resolved
• Non-court referred matters: 81 per cent resolved
• Neighbourhood disputes: 79 per cent resolved
• Organisations, clubs, associations: 75 per cent resolved
• Other business/commercial disputes: 69 per cent resolved
• Court-referred matters: 68 per cent resolved
• Family disputes: 63 per cent resolved
• Workplace disputes: 62 per cent resolved

Source: NSW Department of Communities and Justice.

A Department of Communities and Justice spokesperson said: “In the 40 years since Community Justice Centres were established, the alternative dispute resolution system in NSW has significantly matured, with CJCs now being only one of many government agencies and services offering mediation.

“Despite mediation being the primary objective of CJCs, less than 9 per cent of inquiries proceed to mediation.”

But the exact nature of each inquiry was unclear, and there is no comparable free mediation service in NSW. Some matters are not recommended for mediation, while others may be resolved without it.

The department said it would “continue to provide mediation services for legislatively mandated referrals”, including “disputes involving associations”.

It said neighbourhood disputes “will need to be referred by a court or required by legislation to be mediated through the new service”.

“As they already can, neighbours will be able to access other mediation services and services that will assist them to understand their legal rights and how best to deal with disputes.”

*Name changed to maintain the parties’ confidentiality.

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