Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

In questioning at Senate estimates last week, it was revealed that the Attorney-General has removed the Chief Justice of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia from a panel that recommends who should be appointed as a judge to the court that he oversees. The Chief Justice no longer has a say in the hiring of judges who work for him. In fact, as a result of decisions made by the Attorney, the court isn't represented on the selection panel at all. In fact, when deciding earlier this year to put on a panel to select specialist family law judges, the Attorney-General's hand-picked panel comprised a long-term public servant, a judge from a court that doesn't deal with family law and a lawyer in the field with no judicial experience. Why did the Attorney do this?

When the Chief Justice administers his role or performs the functions of his role, he obviously has the ability to assess the competence of often advocates that appear before him. Yet, Mr Attorney-General, you're removing his ability to select judges with the benefit of seeing their skills as advocates who would invariably and often be chosen as potential candidates to sit on the bench. This Attorney is removing the Chief Justice's ability to have a say on who would be meritorious, who would be good candidates, to ultimately take that prized position of public life of serving their community on the bench.

This is a classic missed opportunity. In fact, the Attorney is spending $1,000 million dollars, a billion dollars, in reforming the AAT. Yet, on something that is so important—the appointment of judges—he is effectively sidelining the Chief Justice, and that is inexplicable. I would be very keen to hear why he has done that.

Why did he ask people who aren't experts in the field to rate the merit of candidates in extremely specialised and important roles? A similar approach was revealed in division 2 of the court. But, wait, there's more. It was also revealed that the Attorney-General has racked up over 2,000 days of delays in appointing judges to the bench of the division 2 court. In one case, he left a position vacant for more than 14 months. You would need to appoint an extra judge to work in that court and have them work for more than five years before you would catch up the time that was lost. That is before you even start to include the additional 10 judges that were promised but have not been delivered by this government. So far as we can tell from MYEFO, these 10 judges were all meant to start on 1 January this year, but it seems as if they won't be appointed until the end of June. Perhaps the Attorney-General could enlighten us in that regard? It doesn't matter if you budget for additional judges, if you don't appoint them.

The effect of these delays by the Attorney-General is that for many Australian families who are at their most vulnerable the pain and sadness of separation and Family Court proceedings are drawn out and made more costly, and it is a price paid in misery. I hope it doesn't pan out that way; I hope that we're wrong, because it is families who are paying the cost because they cannot get their case in front of a judge. Each of us in this place would know a family or families who have proceedings in the Family Court. It is just not fair to those families, to those children, who are waiting to get their matters resolved because justice delayed is justice denied.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

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