Stacking the deck

Payback time in Queensland ... Attorney General's scheme to get criminal appeal judges of the right flavour ... Splitting the Court of Appeal ... Sidelining Margaret McMurdo ... Nothing very subtle here 

McMurdo P: sidelined

THERE was an interesting story in today's Bowen Hill Bugle about a scheme of Queensland attorney general, (Jiving) Jarrod Bleijie, to split the Court of Appeal.  

It's devilish stuff. 

The split would reduce the authority and remit of Court of Appeal President Margaret McMurdo. 

Apparently, the idea is to create a Court of Criminal Appeal (à la NSW). 

This would reverse the earlier consolidation of the appeal courts with the aim of allowing Bleijie to plant a judicial pal as president of the new CCA. 

Margaret McMurdo has not been consulted by the Sunshine Coast conveyancer. She has written to him saying she was "anxious to discuss the matter". 

There's been no response from Bleijieville. 

The creation of a separate Court of Criminal Appeal was floated at the bar conference on the weekend. 

There's a decided pong about the whole thing, with every indication that the scheme is "to get" McMurdo P and install a second president on a relative small bench of six appeal judges. 

In due course, we'll see an appeal court with two divisions, two chiefs, one of which is sidelined from doing criminal appeals (the area where McMurdo excels) with the other branch in step with the government's lawn-order agenda. 

The bar and the government are in furious agreement about the need for a split appeal court. 

Given the primitive quality of the Newman government's sense of wild justice this can be seen as little more than a payback for the appeal court's temerity in refusing Bleijie's appeal in the Fardon case and declaring his executive detention law unconstitutional. 

The fact that husband Philip McMurdo is president of the Judicial Conference of Australia probably doesn't help. 

The JCA issued media releases ever so gently chiding the government's pet chief magistrate Tim Carmody and Jarrod's legislation for executive detention of sex offenders. 

Come back Denver Beanland. All is forgiven.