22 July 2022
This is why Western Australia needs a Judicial Commission.
489,551.48.
It would take most of us a lifetime to put together that kind of money.
It could put a roof over your head or put your kids into their first home.
In WA it’s more than the average amount homeowners owe on their mortgage.
It’s also what taxpayers paid in legal fees for a dispute between a Judge and a Magistrate - which had one accused of ‘bullying’, and the other accused of ‘evidence tampering’.
The dispute wound up before the Supreme Court before being “discontinued” (translation: “settled”).
But it’s not just the significant cost levied at the taxpayer that should alarm you.
It’s the fact that Attorney General John Quigley has decided to bury his head in the sand.
The transcript of the aborted trial reveals that a Children’s Court Magistrate was accused of “doctoring reports of experts” and “making wholesale amendments to reports and sending them back to the report writers for rewriting and endorsement”.
The magistrate was accused of adopting “procedures which are antithetical [to] the proper administration of open justice”.
Meanwhile, the Judge was accused of “bullying" and "calculated humiliation”.
In Parliament, I have put these allegations to the Attorney General.
Do you think he was interested in hearing them?
Of course not.
His representative in the Legislative Council said: “The Attorney General has not received any complaints of the type described.”
Mr Quigley pretended he knew nothing about these serious allegations of evidence tampering, despite knowing full well.
They had even been reported in the news!
Keep in mind that one of his first responses to me when I started pushing this serious matter was: “It is not appropriate for the Attorney to address matters involving individual judicial officers.”
Unbelievable! And why not?
If he is not going to address allegations of evidence tampering and bullying involving judicial officers, who is going to do it?
And where is Premier McGowan in all of this? Why doesn’t he insist that his Attorney General investigate this matter?
This is why WA needs an independent judicial commission that can deal with these kinds of issues.
If there are serious allegations against judicial officers, who steps in if the Attorney General refuses to?
The answer has to be an independent statutory body that deals with these issues.
For example, NSW has a Judicial Commission that tries to bolster public confidence in the judiciary by examining complaints about the ability or behaviour of judicial officers.
Maybe then taxpayers wouldn’t have to fork out a small fortune in legal fees over disputes and allegations involving magistrates and judges.
It’s the least the Attorney General could do while he waits to hear the judgment of the Federal Court over the debacle that saw him ask to re-do his sworn evidence in court.
