This Act may be cited as the Judicature Amendment Act 1997, and is part of the Judicature Act 1908 (“the principal Act”).

This Act comes into force on the date on which it receives the Royal assent.

The principal Act is amended by repealing section 72, and substituting the following section:

All persons who have, in the period beginning on 1 April 1988 and ending with the commencement of this Act, been appointed under the State Sector Act 1988 as Registrars, Deputy Registrars, ushers, Clerks, criers, or other officers of the High Court or the Court of Appeal are deemed to be, and to have always been, validly appointed to their respective offices.

Where any person is deemed, by subsection (1), to have been validly appointed as an officer of the High Court, any action taken by that person, in his or her capacity as an officer of the High Court, in the period beginning on 1 April 1988 and ending with the commencement of this Act, is deemed to be, and to have always been, as valid as it would have been if that person had been validly appointed to the office in accordance with section 27 of the principal Act (in the form in which that section stood at the time of that person’s appointment).

Where any person is deemed, by subsection (1), to have been validly appointed as an officer of the Court of Appeal, any action taken by that person in his or her capacity as an officer of the Court of Appeal, in the period beginning on 1 April 1988 and ending with the commencement of this Act, is deemed to be, and to have always been, as valid as it would have been if that person had been validly appointed to the office in accordance with section 72 of the principal Act (in the form in which that section stood at the time of that person’s appointment).

Nothing in this Act prevents any appointment made before the commencement of this Act by the Department of Justice or the Department for Courts from being reviewed under the procedure put in place by either Department under section 65 of the State Sector Act 1988.