Abbott Moves to Change Judicial Appointment System
Wednesday 5 March 2014 @ 11.39 a.m. | Legal Research
Justice Ruth McColl, a senior NSW judge has cautioned there are ''worrying signs'' the Abbott government is undoing measures to support greater gender diversity on the judicial bench and advocated awareness to safeguard hard-won advancements for female lawyers are not lost.
Justice McColl has served on the Court of Appeal for over ten years, and has said an organised process introduced by the former Labor government to improve the transparency of the appointment process for Federal judges looks to have been scrapped by the Abbott Goverment.
In 2008, the Rudd government introduced a system for hiring judges to the Federal, Family and Federal Circuit Courts in which positions were advertised, instead of the traditional approach, which involved ''informal consultation'' by the Attorney-General and was open to claims of political cronyism.
An advisory panel consisting of the head of the relevant court, a retired judge and a senior administrator from the Attorney-General's Department, reviewed the applications, interviewed candidates and made recommendations to the attorney-general.
In a speech in Sydney on Thursday night Justice McColl said:
''The aim of the process was to ensure the evolution of the federal judiciary into one that better reflected the diversity of the Australian community… That position has now changed. According to the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department website as at 22 February, 2014: 'There are no current judicial appointment processes' for any of the federal courts. Read what you like into that rather Delphic statement.''
Justice McColl, the first female president of the NSW Bar Association, highlighted the risk of reverting back to the traditional method in light of the improvements to equality seen in recent years including the dramatic increase in women on the bench. Justice McColl said there was an ''available inference'' that the present regime for appointing Federal judges had ''reverted to … the traditional method”.
''This could be a worrying sign...The adoption of a more formal process of judicial appointment … has been hard won. Perhaps it is part of the reason the percentage of women on the bench grew from 8.77 per cent in 1996 to 33.53 per cent last year.''
Justice McColl said there were ''other worrying signs'', including that the Coalition was preparing to ''lift the gender diversity reporting requirements of companies from those with more than 100 employees to those with 1000 or more staff'' next month.
''These are clearly early days in terms of what I have described as 'worrying signs'...But they are sufficient to remind us that we need to be vigilant to ensure that there is no backsliding in womens' hard-won advancement in the law.''
Across Australia, there are 340 female judges. This represents 33.5 per cent of the judiciary. The global average is 27 per cent.
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