South Australia – appointing auxiliary judges was the chief justice’s idea … Judicial appointments on the cheap … Bar n’ Grill up in arms … AG looking to merge trial divisions of the Supreme and District courts … Money, money, money
South Australia’s auxiliary judge trauma is still smouldering.
At the end of March the state government gazetted the appointment of three District Court judges as Auxiliary Justices of the SA Supremes for a term of 15 months. They were Barry Beazley, Paul Slattery and Wayne Chivell.
Bar president Andrew Harris said the appointments had a “corrosive effect” on the appearance of judicial independence. The next day Barry Beazley dropped out, refusing to be part of it.
See Harris’ letter to the SA bar
President of the local Conveyancers Society, David Caruso, commended Beazley for a decision that “puts the public interest ahead of self-interest”.
Justice John Sulan retires from the Supremes at the end of this month and the concern is that he will be replaced on the cheap by a rotation of short term auxiliaries from the Dizzo.
The auxiliary idea may spread further as attorney general John Rau floats the idea of a combined Supremes-Dizzo trial court and a standing court of appeal. In that event all District Court judges would be auxiliary Supreme Court judges.
At the moment though, as Harris says, it looks as though the two who have taken up the auxiliary job are on probation for permanent appointments to the Supremes.
The rest of the SA Dizzo judges are mightily cheesed off, feeling that the court now has an “A” team and a “B” team.
The government has put out the word that the idea for the auxiliary appointments came from the chief justice, Chris Kourakis, and the AG just ran with it.
That makes it even more puzzling.
Last year there were complaints about the appointment of seven retired judges as Supreme Court auxiliaries who had been called up to plough through the backlog of work and save money by not finding fresh full-time judges.
At the time Sulan pointed out that in 2003 there were 14 SA Supreme Court judges compared to the then current number of 11.5.
In particular, the bar detests these short-term judicial arrangements because they have the effect of thwarting career advancement.