Quo vadis Soapy Brandis? … Eleven names scratched by CJ from Queensland silks list … Prosecutors dominate NSW Dizzo appointments … Farewell to Equity Queen
The excruciating Bowen Hills Bugle was beside itself with the announcement on Tuesday (Nov. 29) that a Queenslander and a Queensland resident had dominated the judicial selection process.
Somehow it confirmed, once again, Australia is in the grip of the cultural and intellectual superiority of the Pineapple Mafia.
In Canberra, attractive Queenslanders like George Christensen and Senators Ian Macdonald, Barry O’Sullivan, Pauline Hanson and nut-case Malcolm Roberts, have the government dancing to their loony-tunes.
Constitutional interpretation and the shape of our federation is also in the hands of sun-kissed jurists. No wonder the Sydney Oyster Bar and Vic’s Grill are mightily miffed, each only having two of their own on the court.
That’s a minor insult compared to the misery felt by rejected leading lights of the law caper in South Australia and Tasmania.
Sydneysiders are buzzing with the theory that Prof. James Edelman’s selection was all the doing of his sponsor from the far-flung west, Social Services Minister Christian Porter, who in a previous role as WA attorney general raised Edelman up to the WA Supremes in 2011, before Soapy Brandis nabbed him as a judge in the Brisbane branch office of the Federal Court.
The Professor of the Law of Obligations (Oxford) raced through life so quickly that he showed it was unnecessary to arrive on the bench with a silk gown.
At least Edelman won’t be sitting on Air New Zealand Ltd v ACCC, an appeal from one his Full Fed judgments.
Members of the Brisbane bar are now in a tizz that Soapy Brandis will appoint himself to Edelman’s vacancy at the Brisbane registry.
In Queensland it is compulsory for new silks to be QCs, courtesy of the former Conveyancer General Jarrod Bleijie.
Today’s announcement is upsetting because the bar actually sent 14 names of to chief justice Catherine Holmes to be approved as QCs. Back came three, i.e. 11 were scratched, and one new one added. No reasons, explanations or excuses were offered.
Barristers are livid and senior bartender Christopher Hughes has been trying to negotiate with the court, without success.
The four names went off the Gov House, where Daphnis de Jersey swiftly issued letters patent.
Hughes issued a cryptic little missive saying:
“The appointments were made on the recommendation of The Honourable Catherine Holmes, Chief Justice of Queensland. On behalf of the association I congratulate our new silks on their appointment.”
The attorney general added:
“These appointments recognise the dedication, diligence and leadership of these members of the legal profession.”
Adding insult to injury, D’Ath led her media release with the announcement of a new District Court judge – Dennis Lynch – who joins two appointees announced last month, Catherine Muir and Nicole Kefford.
They were the first to emerge from the new post-Carmody judicial filtering system – the Judicial Appointments Advisory Panel, chaired by retired judge Hugh Botting.
When Muir and Kefford were elevated, some of the bar’s blokes sobbed into their pineapple cocktails, worrying about their place in the firmament, as “women were taking over the joint”.
More than a few people have noticed that in NSW there is a marked tendency to appoint prosecutors as District Court judges.
Since Gabrielle (Goody-Two-Shoes) Upton became attorney general in April 2015, 15 have been appointed to the bench of the District Court and of those two-thirds have have come from a prosecution background.
No public defenders have been appointed, although it is understood some have applied.
Of the 66.6 percent, six were crown prosecutors, one was the acting DPP and three had at some stage worked for the Commonwealth DPP.
None of them are unworthy people, but collectively their appointments are an issue.
The suspicion is that this is the work of the senior minister in the Justice Cluster F@#* – former copper and one-time leader of Cockies Corner, Troy-Boy Grant.
The weighting in favour of prosecutors rather neglects the fact that the court also has a heavy civil case load.
Here are the prosecutorial people who have been appointed to the court by Goody:
Here’s some recent to-and-fro with the bureaucracy about the matter at attorney general’s estimates.
Word has spread that Paddy Bergin at the end of this year is leaving her post as NSW chief judge in equity. She went to the Supreme Court in March 1999 and became CJ in Eq in 2009.
Justice Peter Hamill who has been running one of the biggest criminal trials in NSW history, continues to delight with catchwords that lure readers into his judgments.
This is from judgment 54, in his recently unsuppressed interlocutory rulings in the Qaumi cases, aka the Brothers for Life trials …
