I think the opposite of some of my colleagues here. I actually think it would be dangerous to add authority and decision-making roles to judges sitting on preliminary inquiries. Right now they pass and say it goes to trial in the other court. The test is simply whether or not there's sufficient evidence under the proper test to have a trial.
If you then carve off some of the trial issues for the first thing, you really are creating two trials, one of which is going to happen in the first time and one will happen in the second time. I think that's a dangerous reform that should be very cautiously considered.
The second point is—and this a culture point—it used to all be about preliminary inquiries. It's now hardly about preliminary inquiries at all. They are dying, frankly, a natural death. What we really need to do is focus on how to achieve the goals that preliminary inquiries used to be the only tool for, through the other tools that are available. In my view those have to surround themselves around the relationship between the Crown and the defence primarily, not the judges and decisions made by trial judges ahead of the trial instead of at the trial. We have to dispose of this rigid, theory-bound approach to criminal process. That includes disclosure and preliminary decisions, which in my view have to be made by the trial judge and not by other judicial officers.