State government invest’s extra $2m Townsville Courthouse to build extra courtrooms
The Queensland government has committed to building two new courtrooms in Townsville, injecting an extra $2m into the upgrade to help judges deal with the growing crime rate.
Townsville
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The Queensland government has committed an extra $2m to the Townsville Courthouse refurbishment project, bumping the number of new court rooms up to two.
Queensland Attorney-General Deb Frecklington travelled to Townsville to announce the funding upgrade on Thursday, February 27.
“This brings the courthouse upgrade up to around $9.5m (in total),” Ms Frecklington said.
“The former Labor government decided to only build one courtroom. What we’re going to do is build two.”
Ms Frecklington said this would “ensure business as usual” as the crime rate continues to grow in Townsville.
The two new courtrooms will be constructed where the current Supreme Court library is.
It is not yet known if the courtrooms will be for Magistrates, District, or Supreme Court, but Ms Frecklington said discussion would begin soon into whether an extra district judge needs to be appointed to Townsville.
“That was an election promise and we will be looking into that,” she said.
Ms Frecklington said she was also well aware of video conferencing and IT issues being experienced by the courts.
“The digitisation of our court system is really lacking,” she said.
“The video link between the courts and our correctional centres quite frankly isn’t up to scratch.”
Ms Frecklington said herself, the corrections minister and police minister, were all working together to address the issue.
Thuringowa MP Natalie Marr said herself and fellow MPs, Janelle Poole and Adam Baillie, first spoke to the Attorney-General about a funding upgrade when they realised “one courtroom wasn’t going to cut it”.
“The initial funding was for one courtroom, and we know if you do it right the first time it’s more cost effective, so I’m very happy to hear we now have two rooms,” Ms Marr said.
“Victims have to wait a very long time to get through court... this is us looking long-term, not short-term.”
The original upgrades for the courthouse were expected to cost $7.4m across four years.
This comes off the back of a $9m upgrade in 2019 to install a “state of the art” Domestic and Family Violence courtroom in the Townsville Courthouse.
Originally published as State government invest’s extra $2m Townsville Courthouse to build extra courtrooms
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