New innovation boss at fed courts … ACT bar stamps its tiny foot … Hot new entrant at Wardell … Hilton can’t shake Bucket’s legacy … NSW Judicial Commission expands its territory … Goings On, with Theodora 

How unusually prescient we were. 

Here’s the ad Wokka ran for the job and here’s our prediction that Louise would land the gig. 

The job was specially created to assist Soden to run the newly merged registry structure whereby the registries of three federal courts would be merged and staff sliced. 

By all accounts Anderson is well regarded and well liked, having worked previously as the native title registrar at the Federal Court. 

In an email Soden told staff yesterday (Feb. 26) that he was both “very pleased” and “extremely pleaded”: 

“I am very pleased to let you know that Louise Anderson has accepted my offer to join the Federal Court’s Executive team as National Director Court and Tribunal Services.

I am extremely pleased that Louise has agreed to return to the federal court at such an important time of change and innovation. Louise brings to this new role significant relevant experience, both in her previous role with this court and her current role of chief executive officer of the Supreme Court of Victoria where she supported her chief justice in the administration and management of a very busy and large court. In particular Louise was instrumental in the delivery of that court’s digital transformation, an agile cloud based solution providing an end to end digital experience for judges and staff …” 

Louise takes up her mop and bucket at the federal courts in early April.

He complains that because the recent appointments to the court are relatively youthful, “no further appointments are expected for a period of time” and, by inference, members of the local bar are missing out on the plums. 

Ken is careful not to criticise the quality of recent appointments, only the “process”. 

Basically it boils down to the bar not having enough say in who gets elevated. 

“Neither the bar nor the law society have a formally recognised role to play in the selection process and speaking on behalf of the bar there is a sense that the local profession is largely marginalised in the selection process.”  

Ken is thinking that new appointment commissioners and advisory committees with the local bar having a big say maybe the way to go in future. 

He wants more “transparency” in appointments and the process to be “depoliticised” and to be made more “meaningful” i.e. less foreigners from across the border and more members of the local bar getting the nod. 

The president adds, for the record: 

“Our court is held in high regard throughout Australia and the business of our court is being discharged, it is said with great respect, with a refreshing efficiency.” 

This suggests that the “torpid languor” and the “drowsy procrastination” is in abeyance. 

His last day as SCP was February 23. 

Tedeschi’s career at the DPP can to a halt after he issued a ukase to prosecutors in December that advised they should not run cases as independent advocates but rather in accordance with instructions from head office. 

He suggested prosecutors were making too many “inappropriate concessions” to defence counsel and that their job was to “act as contradictor to the version put forward by an accused …”. 

The bar was incandescent upon hearing about the Tedeschi’s advice. Bar prez Arty Moses said the SCP’s email “displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the independent role of crown prosecutors”. The uniform barristers’ rules requires counsel to exercise independent forensic judgment, not act as mere agents. 

The DPP Lloyd Babb agreed and the next day Tedeschi withdrew his directive, followed shortly afterwards with an announcement that after 20 years he was leaving the prosecutors’ chambers. 

The upsetting developments were explained here. 

Now that he’s at the private bar there’s plenty of scope for making concessions, inappropriate or otherwise, and for forensic opportunities to contradict his contradictors. 

Furthermore, there’ll be no instructions from HQ.

Justice Elizabeth Fullerton is still reserved in the malicious prosecution case brought against Tedeschi by Gordon Wood. 

Gageler and Keane saw him off, with costs. The former Sydney solicitor spent over 30 years being unfit and improper and now the High Court has decided he remains in that state permanently. 

In 1983 he participated in a conspiracy to corrupt the already corrupt NSW Minister for Corrective Service, Rex (Buckets) Jackson. 

Buckets was deep in gambling debts and open to a bit of extra cash on the side. Hilton helped arrange money, through a criminal identity called Frank Hakim, to be sent to the minister so as to facilitate the early release of marijuana merchants Salvatore Falvo, Tony Giofrelle and Angelo Romeo – known as the Broken Hill Three. 

Hilton sunk himself by being caught on a police tap asking Hakim why the prisoners had not been released: 

“Well, he has got his money, what’s the delay?” 

It’s not the first time he’s knocked at the door of the High Court. Following his conspiracy conviction with a sentence of nine and six years he unsuccessfully asked the High Court to find that the wire tap was unconstitutional. 

His current status is capitis deminutio. 

Previous coverage of the Hilton saga, here and here. 

The chief justice trod delicately as judge Greg Borchers, the focus of allegations of judicial bullying, was sitting among the assembled throng. 

Grant gave three cheers to security of tenure for judicial officers, then added: 

“That understanding in no way ignores or obscures the fact that from time to time there may be instances of inappropriate judicial conduct falling short of misconduct warranting removal.” 

People shuffled and peered closely at their fingernails. 

Sometimes the misbehaviour can be fixed on appeal. Other times the head of jurisdiction has to have a quiet word with the judge, behind closed doors. 

“It requires a necessarily painful dissection of the offending behaviours and the sanction of a judicial colleague in circumstances where there is no statutory or other clearly defined authority for doing so.” 

Grant explained that the assessment of judicial demeanour is a subjective undertaking: 

“What some may see as a robust exchange between a judge and a practitioner testing the cogency of submissions, others may see as judicial bullying.” 

The upshot of all this is that the NT CJ feels it’s time for the territory to have a judicial commission. An inquiry some years ago said that the jurisdiction was too small for its own judges’ watchdog. 

“That is a conclusion that should now be revisited.” 

He said that the judges of the court have come up with a model that would see the NSW Judicial Commission handling complaints about NT judges. They would be referred by a local registrar who has the job “to weed out frivolous complaints”. 

The plan is being chewed over by the law society and the bar “with a view to making a joint submission to the executive government”. 

This would allow Borcher-type dramas to be outsourced to Sydney, rather than handled locally by tribal chiefs.