Aged care royal commission … Appointment schmozzle … Dick Tracey to the rescue … WA Supremes end up with an extra no-vowels judge
Nearly three months after the terms of reference were announced and on Christmas eve the commission invited submissions. A preliminary hearing will be held on January 18 in Adelaide, from where the commission will conduct its operations. Hearings in earnest get underway in February.
SloMo asked the public to help him draw up the terms of reference, resulting in more than 5,000 submissions in five days.
Initially, Justice Joseph McGrath from the Supreme Court of WA was appointed a commissioner, along with Lynelle Briggs, a former CEO of Medicare and a public service commissioner. She is doing various other bits and pieces for government, such as reviewing the Online Safety Act and looking after aid governance for DFAT.
McGrath is a former Perth lawyer and ex-state DPP before arriving at the Supreme Court in November 2016.
The Royal Commission comes under the Department of Health, but no doubt the Christian Porter would have been consulted since he appointed McGrath as WA DPP when he was state AG, and McGrath is reported to be in the “famous” Porter wedding photo.
Anyway, McGrath’s appointment proved to be short-lived. Two months after he got the job and before the commission had struck a blow he resigned for “family reasons”.
Indeed, the aged care gig would have been tricky. He is married to WA appeals judge Janine Pritchard and together they have two small children. Janine would not be having a great time with her husband based in Adelaide while she juggled the nippers and appeals in Perth.
Into the breach came Major General Dick Tracey who in 2018 retired after a dozen years on the Federal Court. He’s contributed papers and thoughts to the anti-union HR Nicholls Society and it’s expected he’ll bring military briskness to the task of the royal commission.
But, that’s not the only twist in the tale. The WA Supreme’s principal registrar Larissa (The Kisser) Strk was leapfrogged over Master Craig Sanderson and given an acting judicial appointment to cover for what was believed to be an absent McGrath.
She had come to the court from the bowels of Mallesons and many thought that she would have to go back to being a registrar now that McGrath was not doing royal commission work.
However, to the surprise of many, the CJ Peter Quinlan would like to keep the vowel-free Strk as an acting judge at least till the end of June, but this has not yet been confirmed by the AG.
By way of explanation, Strk is a Croatian surname. There are many Croats around Spearwood in Perth’s south, a large market gardening migrant community who arrived in the west during the 1950s and 60s.
There is also the famous bathroom escape story by another lawyer at Mallesons in Perth – but that will hold for another day.