Reshuffle … Leading magistrate, pan rattler and former copper becomes NSW State Coroner following former Coroner’s shift to Ombudsman … More money for new Madges … Alex Mitchell has the details 

DINNER invitations from the newly-appointed NSW State Coroner Leslie Mabbutt have become a hot ticket for legal-eagle gourmands.

That’s because Mabbutt started his working career as a chef and is still rated a top cook in his home kitchen.

Mabbutt has no experience whatsoever in inspecting the organs of deceased human beings but knows all about the succulent sweetmeats of game and farmyard animals. 

After beginning his career as a chef in 1977, Mabbutt changed course eight years later and joined the NSW Police Force, serving as a general duties constable in Newtown. 

He married a female staffer in the Local Court system and decided to move into the magistracy, first as administrative assistant to the Chief Magistrate and then onto the magistrates’ bench. 

Over the past five years Mabbutt has been the coordinating magistrate at Sydney’s Central Local Court, which is easily the busiest custody court in NSW, if not the country. 

Next year the new State Coroner’s jurisdiction will be boosted by the opening of the $91.5 million Forensic Medicine and Coroner’s Court, a newly enlarged building on the old Lidcombe Hospital site in Western Sydney. 

Here’s a video tracking the external and internal glory of the new forensic and court complex … 

The Lidcombe facility will replace the 50-year-old court at Glebe on Parramatta Road near the University of Sydney. 

“Magistrate Mabbutt has conducted training sessions on bail and domestic violence, has written chapters for the Judicial Commission’s Local Court Bench Book and mentors newly appointed magistrates,” said NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman in making his announcement. 

The AG has ignored a number of front-runners to promote Mabbutt to a five-year term in one of the country’s oldest judicial posts.

His appointment was approved at this week’s cabinet meeting which also decided to appoint the former State Coroner Michael Barnes as NSW Ombudsman.

Before accepting the Ombudsman role, Barnes conducted a two-year inquiry into the 2014 Lindt Café siege in Martin Place. 

His new job will be less arduous because the Coalition government has trimmed its budget as well as its powers to investigate public complaints against the police. 

Barnes is the son of the late Allan Barnes, a distinguished journalist who enjoyed a stellar career in the Canberra press gallery in the 1960s and at The Age in Melbourne. 

The attorney general must have also squeezed some money out of Treasury, because yesterday (Wednesday, April 11) he also announced the appointment of three new magistrates for the badly under-resourced Local Court.