Last weekend AJOA convened its Colloquium in Hobart after a 2-year COVID-19 hiatus. Over 100 judges and magistrates from courts around Australia and New Zealand gathered to hear from eminent speakers. The event was a great success. As you may suspect from the photo below, it was agreed that next year’s conference will be held in Auckland, New Zealand between the 6th and 9th of October. Mark those diaries now!
The new president, Justice Michael Walton (Supreme Court of New South Wales), past president Justice Glenn Martin (Senior Judge Administrator of the Supreme Court of Queensland) and Allan Blow (Chief Justice of Tasmania).
While all the speakers and topics were excellent, the stand out sessions for me were first on the Plight of Women Judges in Afghanistan:
‘When international judicial collegiality matters’
Chaired by President Fleur Kingham (Land Court of Queensland) and Judge Robyn Tupman, (District Court of New South Wales), the session included interviews with women Afghan Judges in a facilitated question and answer session that was frankly, humbling.
17 judges and their families have been resettled in Australia as part of an International Women’s Judges Association effort. You can read more about that and a recent humanitarian award made to the organisation headed by our very own Susan Glazebrook elsewhere in this months edition. You can also hear more at this link, an audio only version of the SBS News segment shown during the session about these refugee judges.
The most challenging and thought-provoking lecture was from Dr Joe McIntyre (University of South Australia) on ‘The Myths of Judicial Independence’. This is part of a recurring theme first developed by The Hon Justice Stephen Gageler AC, High Court of Australia in his earlier speech on Judicial Legitimacy , what might be renamed ‘Without fear or favour”.
The Myths is such an impressive piece of scholarship that we will devote a special report about it at a later date.
JANZ now has a representative on the AJOA standing committee on judicial independence. We had our first meeting this month you can read about that here.