Both major parties have rejected legal reforms that would end the politicisation of the judiciary in Queensland and stop it being the only state in Australia that puts juveniles in adult prisons, say justice advocates.
The Liberal National party (LNP) and Labor have refused calls for an independent body to vet legal appointments in the wake of Tim Carmody’s highly contentious elevation to supreme court chief justice.
And neither party in power would stop jailing 17-year-olds with adults, in what one church figure said was a human rights abuse that violated international conventions.
Despite the appointment of Carmody and others emerging as a major controversy under the Newman government, Labor has sided with the LNP in opposing an independent judicial commission.
The state’s law society and council for civil liberties have called for a commission such as in NSW, which independently assesses prospective magistrates or judges.
Bill Potts, the prominent Gold Coast solicitor, said the Newman government had provoked “widespread questioning of the justice system” but Labor’s record in power was also “appalling”.
This follows warnings this week from former corruption fighter Tony Fitzgerald that Queensland politics was reverting to “the old style politics where the winner takes all”.
Anglican church reverend Peter Catt, a spokesman for the group Balanced Justice, condemned both parties’ refusal to immediately stop the jailing of 17-year-olds in adult prisons.
“My understanding is it’s a human rights abuse and we’re failing our international obligations to protect children,” he said.
Potts said both parties saw the appointment of magistrates and judges as spoils of office and had been guilty of putting political affiliations above merit.
“Without a doubt, both (parties) jealously guard it because it’s seen as an opportunity to affect the composition of the courts,” he said.
“This applied whether a government was seeking to enact a “punitive” policies or prone to appointing judges who were “soft touches, with a more left view view of law and order”, Potts said.
“The real problem is this: unless you take the political process almost entirely out of it, you have a system that is suspect.
“What we have now is a system where obscure people in the bar association and law society may be asked and the attorney general without any real consultation appoints who they want.”
Catt said Labor’s response to the law society call to stop treating 17-year-old offenders as adults - that it “would be moving from that position over time” - was disappointing.
He said attorney general Jarrod Bleijie had promised but never delivered a “blueprint” to balance out the LNP’s punitive youth justice policies.
These include “name and shame” provisions and “boot camps” which the state’s top children’s court judge has condemned.
“Our view is if you’re going to be really tough on crime you want to reduce the rate of recidivism… harsher measures like locking up a juvenile in an adult prison, how can that not help someone become a criminal in later life?” he said.
“Why has all this been done against all the evidence from around the world? Where’s the blueprint? Disappeared into the ether.”
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